


The Expression™

by dreamsintechnicolor



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Age of Consent, Anxiety, Boys In Love, Consent is Sexy And Minsung Knows It, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Han Jisung | Han is a Confident Gay, Happy Ending, Lee Minho | Lee Know Is Bad at Feelings, Lee Minho | Lee Know is a Panicked Gay, M/M, Panic Attacks, Threatening but With Love, Y'all Minho just wants to do right by Jisung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:02:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28820427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamsintechnicolor/pseuds/dreamsintechnicolor
Summary: Minho has seen that expression more times than he can remember, but it isn’t until he finds out what it really means that he starts counting.Or: how Minho accidentally conditioned himself to use Jisung's jerk off schedule to regulate his emotions.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Felix, Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know, Hwang Hyunjin/Yang Jeongin | I.N, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 247





	1. Pre-Debut

**Author's Note:**

> This was the one shot from hell that I decided to break into chronological bits and post in pieces. 
> 
> There are graphic descriptions of anxiety/panic attacks in this fic, because Minho bottles his shit up until it bursts, but he's taken care of and things are okay in the end. Kind of the same for Jisung, though his is less graphic. 
> 
> This fic will also address THE AGE OF CONSENT which is a touchy topic in Korea, especially concerning idols, so I'll say it here: the age of majority and the age of consent, by Korean law, are not the same thing. The attitudes towards it in this fic vary from extremely concerned about it to completely flippant. Some of them worry about it, some don't, just like people hovering around the age of consent in any country who want to have sex or are negotiating having sex. That being said, there is no sex between anyone who is under the age of MAJORITY, even though there is conversation about having sex between the age of CONSENT and the age of MAJORITY. Minsung do not have sex until Jisung turns 19 because it makes Minho uncomfortable and Jisung cares about Minho's comfort.

The first time Minho ever saw The Expression sent a sense of relief coursing through him. The group had been practicing relentlessly, spending hours in the dance studio, hours in vocal and rap lessons, and hours at school with hardly any time in between for anything else. Minho himself was getting two or three hours of sleep a night and he could feel the pressure setting in. The others were starting to crack as well, especially the younger members. He’d caught Jisung and Jeongin fighting over the last of the orange juice in the refrigerator earlier in the week and Felix hadn’t spoken to Hyunjin since his headphones had gone missing and turned up in Hyunjin’s bag a few hours later. Watching Felix pretend to be even worse at Korean than he really was to ignore Hyunjin was only funny for so long before Minho started to lose it as well. With the rest of the hyungs out of the dorm, it fell to Minho to mediate the arguments and with less than half of his minimum sleep requirement, Minho could only handle so much.

So the stress built. And it built, and built, and built some more. Minho let the tension grow until it was practically another member of the group in its own right and then let it come to a head the day of the evaluation. The youngest members weren’t speaking to each other, hadn’t been since Minho had come out of his shower that morning, but Minho soldiered on. Chan led the members into the evaluation room, Minho taking up the rear to make sure everyone stayed together and feeling their ball of tension floating above them. 

The evaluation itself was a blur. It was like the bubble popped and rained out the weeks of tension, all of the members pushing themselves and letting their frustration drive them to dance and sing and rap like they’d never done before. Minho didn’t remember the performance, but he remembered the immediate ache afterwards that meant he’d put more into the dance than he’d had to give. He also remembered the pleased, smug smirk on JYP’s face as he congratulated Chan and nodded approvingly to the rest of them. 

There was already a bone deep relief in Minho that had settled into him with JYP’s approval, but later that night when he came out of the shower, The Expression pushed the relief deeper, pumped it out of his bones and all the way out into the tips of his fingers and toes and leaving him feeling lighter than he had in months. He was towelling his hair dry, stepping out of the bathroom and almost straight into Jisung. The younger boy hadn’t smiled a real smile in weeks and he still wasn’t, but there was a pink flush over his cheek bones and his face was soft and open instead of tense with poorly hidden anger. 

“Sorry hyung,” he had said, stepping neatly around Minho and into the bathroom. Minho had joined the others in the living room without a word, but inside he was glowing. If Jisung was glowing again, the rest would return to normal before long. 

To Minho’s relief, this proved true. By the end of the week, all of the petty fights and the arguments had been resolved and everyone was working together again. That’s not to say they stay happy all the time– their practice schedule doesn’t really let up much, and there are moments where Minho has to take deep breaths or leave the room to keep himself from saying things he would regret. The others fight as well, driven by too little sleep and the kind of pure mental exhaustion that comes with putting in more effort than you have to spare. 

Over time, Minho learns to deal with this. He learns that the others say things they don’t mean and that sometimes Jisung throws things if pushed too far. He learns that while Felix’s Korean is still rocky, his English is fantastic and he won’t hesitate to rip another member apart with words that leave Jisung in giggles (or in a rage, if they’re directed at him) and Chan reprimanding him harshly. He learns that sometimes, all he can do is leave and wait until things blow over. Luckily though, he also learns that there is a sign that the cycle is over and there will be a period of camaraderie and good times before the stress starts eating at them again.

It’s not that the entire group bases their moods off of Jisung; he doesn’t have that kind of power, but he’s something like an omen. Jisung is usually the first one to get tense when things are about to go south, but he’s also the first one to relax when things are on the upswing. Minho learns to look for The Expression, learns to hold out, hold onto his tension until he sees it and then relax. It always comes sooner or later, and it leaves Minho feeling like he can breathe again. 

He makes his way through their training and then the beginning of the survival show like that, and then everything goes more wrong than he could have ever imagined.


	2. Elimination

Minho had nearly been sick when the elimination round had been announced. Losing a member? The thought left him feeling green around the edges. Losing  _ all _ the members? Having them all snatched away from him because he wasn’t good enough? The selfish part of Minho almost wished JYP would end it all, tell them that the show wasn’t popular enough and they would have to go back to training, but he knew that wouldn’t happen. He knew there was a weak link and as much as it pained him, Minho knew he was that weak link. 

Minho knew that he was about to lose everything he’d been working for. An hour from now, he would be leaving. There would be no more girl group dances with the maknaes, no more chaotic cooking and bullying Chan into leaving the studio to sleep with the other hyungs. Minho’s heart pounded, his skin prickled, and between the weight of his denim jacket and the unbearable heat of the stage lights, he was sweating and dizzy. It took everything he had to remain upright and somewhat dignified. 

Though there were tears welling up in his eyes, he kept his gaze trained on the floor in front of his feet. He could feel Felix vibrating with tension on his left and Changbin’s cool control on his right and he tried to remain as still as possible. When his name rang through the room, Minho’s eyes snapped to JYP’s and he felt his soul drop through his feet. Everything after that moment was a blur. He remembers agreeing with whatever JYP was saying– anything to get off that stage and  _ escape– _ and he remembers Jisung’s hand falling on his shoulder but everything else was lost in the haze of heartbreaking disappointment.

The producers eventually shuffled him off stage and in front of yet another camera with instructions to say his goodbyes. 

“I’m eliminated,” he started, smiling through the pain as the truth of it sank in. He said some more things, just trying to get through the message so they would let him leave, but the scowling producer behind the camera held up a cue card that said ‘ _ be grateful!!!’ _ and he realized what they wanted from him. 

“For Chan hyung,” he said, remembering all the times Chan had cheered him on and supported him, even when he knew the elder was getting even less sleep than he was. He said this, thanked Chan for being there for him, for all of them, and had to blink away tears. 

“For Changbin,” he continued. Hours upon hours spent in the studio or tucked away in quiet corners of the dorm flashed through Minho’s mind. How hard had Changbin worked, teaching him to rap on top of all of his own lessons and practice? He sniffled, knowing that as hard as Changbin had tried, Minho hadn’t been good enough. He thought back on all the times he’d had to rap for JYP and realized that there was only one single time that it had come easily to him. 

“Jisung,” he breathed out. “I remember when PD-nim asked me to rap and you held my hand. I did really well that time but this time… did I fail because you weren’t there, holding my hand? I’m really thankful for you.”

Minho felt the tears welling up again and rushed out his request for Felix, asking him to study so that they could finally have a whole conversation in Korean without hand gestures or stopping to repeat or correct themselves. He thanked the group over and over again until the producer nodded and signaled for the camera to be cut. 

Minho left the film studio later that night after meetings with management to find that the staff had packed all his belongings and returned them to his bed in the trainee dorms. Feeling cold and empty inside, Minho crawled into bed and tried to sleep with the pity of the other trainees filling the room like a fog. 

Sleep didn’t come easily that night. 

In fact, sleep didn’t come easily to Minho for the next month. He threw himself into his training so thoroughly that it was almost like being back in Stray Kids, preparing for their evaluations, only much lonelier with none of the other boys. The other trainees weren’t his teammates– they were competition. Minho’s dedication to his training meant that he wasn’t paying much attention to Stray Kids. Thinking about them hurt and watching the show tapings with the other trainees left him feeling like his skin was three sizes too small so when he walked in and found a crowd of boys standing around his bed, all staring at it like it was going to bite or catch fire, Minho had no idea what was going on. As he got closer, he registered the familiar sniffles and his heart sank. 

“Minho,” one of the other trainees said softly, finally noticing his presence. He pushed through the crowd and as soon as he was through, he had an armful of sobbing Felix. 

“I practiced so,  _ so  _ hard, hyung, I promise!” he wailed. “I practiced for you, just like you asked but I wasn’t good enough!” 

Minho shushed the younger boy, petting through his blonde hair and glaring at the trainees until they scattered, all finding something to do that left the dorm vacant. It took Minho a long time to calm Felix enough to understand his shaky Korean. 

“Jisungie asked me to come to you,” Felix mumbled later that night. The two of them were curled together on Minho’s bed, holding on to what was left of the camaraderie that had been ripped from them both. “He told me to come find you and to stick together and debut together so he knows we’ll never be alone.”

Knowing that Jisung still worried about him made Minho’s heart throb, but he had to ask the question even if he was dreading the answer. 

“How is everybody? Are they alright?”

It took Felix a long time to answer.

“Chan is… not taking it well,” he said finally. “He’s not sleeping and getting him to eat is a struggle every day. I think he blames himself. Changbin has just lost it entirely. All he does is rap and brood and sleep, like he thinks he can keep the rest together if he just works so hard that he carries everyone on his back.”

“And Jisungie?” Minho prompted, rubbing Felix’s back softly as the other grew more upset. 

“He’s just so  _ sad,  _ hyung,” the boy whispered. 

Minho blocked out whatever Felix said next; he got his answer. He eventually drifted off to sleep a few hours after the exhaustion had Felix snoring softly into his shoulder. Though there was a sharp feeling inside him like a piece of his soul had broken off, leaving a jagged edge, Minho slept better that night with Felix there than he had since before his elimination. 

Apparently Felix felt the same, because every night after that found Felix crawling into Minho’s bed. The other trainees never questioned it, either because they still weren’t sure how to act around this new, harder Minho or because Felix had always been the kind of soft that meant he got away with almost everything. The two of them became inseparable, working together on dance and Felix’s Korean lessons and sleeping together in the down time. Just as they were settling into their new routine, JYP decided to turn it all on its head. Minho was starting to sense a routine. 

“In hindsight,” JYP sighed, leaning over the desk, “I realize I may have been rash, cutting you both from the group. There will still be time to improve before debut and the two of you have already made great strides since being eliminated. We are going to have a vote for the last episode. If you do well, then the group will debut whole and you will return. If you two don’t step up though, you’ll go back to training. Understood?”

“Understood,” Minho confirmed before Felix could start to babble. He led the younger boy out of the room and then straight to their favorite dance studio. 

“Hyung?”   
  
“Listen to me, Felix,” Minho ordered. The boy’s eyes went wide and he nodded, waiting to hear what had Minho’s voice going so intense. “This is our chance, do you understand that? If we nail this, we get them back. We have to give our all in this, right?”

“Right,” Felix confirmed, reminding Minho a little of a bobble head with how excitedly he was nodding his head. 

“We’re going to do this, Felix,” Minho said lowly. There was hope coursing through him for the first time in what felt like forever and he wasn’t about to let it go. They would debut, all of them, if he had to rip JYP apart to make it happen. 

Luckily, it didn’t come to that. Minho was ready to keel over by the end of it, racked with the kind of exhaustion that left you sore and dizzy. He remembered seeing the sunrise twice since the last time he slept, but he was pretty sure he missed a third one while he was working in one of the basement studios. He wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d been awake but the pure relief of JYP announcing the results of the voting sapped the last of the strength from his legs. He was able to lock his knees and allow the support of his teammates to keep him upright, but Chan and Jisung had to support him between them to get him back home. 

“Take a shower and then crash– you need to sleep for about 14 hours before you even  _ think _ about doing anything else,” Chan had ordered sternly before dumping him in the bathroom. Minho leaned against the sink, breathing deeply and staring into his reflection while he worked through the adrenaline crash. Just as he started to gather his strength to stand on his own feet, there was a soft knock on the door. 

“Hyung?” came the soft call. Jisung poked his head around the door and then stepped inside when he realized Minho was still in his clothes. “Felix said he didn’t think he would be able to stand up long enough to make it through a shower so we had to set him up in the bath with Binnie hyung to make sure he doesn’t drown. Are you going to be okay or do you need somebody to sit in here?”

Every part of Minho screams at him to say no, to take the time to wallow in his adrenaline crash but the weakness in his knees tells him just how bad of an idea that would be. He just got back into the group– he couldn’t fall and crack his head open and get sent home now. 

“Just…” Minho sighed, “just have somebody sit outside with the door cracked. I think I’ll be alright but just in case.”

Jisung looked like he wanted to argue for a moment but then, to Minho’s horror, his face crumpled and tears filled his eyes. He launched himself at Minho and buried his face in Minho’s chest, wrapping his skinny arms around him and squeezing.

“Sungie,” he wheezed. Minho was emotionally drained and unsure of how to handle a crying Jisung so he just awkwardly patted his head and wrapped his free arm around his shoulders. It took a few minutes for Jisung to calm down, his cries fading out into little sniffles that he kept hidden in Minho’s shirt. “Sung, really, I’m all sweaty and gross. Let me take a shower and then I’ll come hang out with you for a little while before I go to sleep.”

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

“You don’t want to sleep with Felix?” Minho frowned, knowing the two were close. Platonic soulmates, according to Felix. 

“He’s sleeping with Changbin hyung,” Jisung said simply, “and I don’t think all of us would fit in one bed.”

Something in Minho lit up a little at Jisung’s words. He had been so focused on how much he had lost to realize that maybe the members were missing him as well. He gave Jisung one last squeeze and then pushed him back to arm’s length. 

“Go put your stuff in my room while I shower so that we can get to sleep, okay?” he told Jisung. The younger boy nodded and sniffed once before taking another step back.

“I’ll tell the others to listen for you falling or screaming,” he promised. “Leave the door open.” 

Minho nodded, shooing him out and stripping down to get clean. He moved through his shower on autopilot, washing and rinsing and washing and rinsing body and hair quickly under lukewarm water so the others could have their own showers. It didn’t do much for his sore muscles but the sound and the familiarity helped to soothe his raw nerves. Minho stepped out of the shower feeling a lot closer to normal. He clutched a towel around his hips, cursing Chan for dumping him in the bathroom with no change of clothes as he slipped out of the bathroom. 

What he saw when he stepped out sapped all the remaining tension from his body and he suddenly realized that he was seeing something he’d thought he’d never see again. The Expression, in all its glory, was right there in front of him. Jisung was standing in the hall, talking to Hyunjin with his pillow and pyjamas in hand. He had the pretty blush, the glow, the soft relaxation even in the face of what seemed to be teasing from Hyunjin. Minho stopped in place and took a moment to breathe, his chest going tight at just how quickly his mind had decided everything was okay again. The others noticed him after a moment and Hyunjin’s teasing escalated enough that Minho had to step in.

“Enough,” he said shortly, gesturing both of them into the bathroom, “stop teasing and get clean. Chan was right, we  _ all  _ need to shower and sleep. Sung, I’ll take that if you want.”

Jisung handed the pillow over and disappeared into the bathroom with Hyunjin on his tail, still poking fun at him for the blush on his cheeks. Minho hurried to his own bedroom to get dressed, lest anyone decide tonight would be the night to try snatching his towel. It wouldn’t be the first time or the last, but he wasn’t particularly in the mood. He made it to his room with his dignity intact and grabbed the first pyjamas he could find in his still-packed belongings. He had them on and was tucked up into bed when Jisung finally joined him, slightly damp and his cheeks flushed pink from the warm water. 

“I’m glad you’re back, hyung,” Jisung said softly as he climbed in next to Minho. 

“I’m glad I’m back too, Jisung,” Minho mumbled, already falling asleep. 


	3. Debut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, there is some accidental voyeurism in this part and it's the beginning of Minho freaking out over Jisung being too young for him.

Being eliminated and coming back gave Minho a new kind of power in the group. He’d noticed it with Felix first because Felix’s new power was softer– the members never walked on eggshells around him but they were quick to back off any time he seemed to be pushed a little too far. No one was willing to see their sunshine cry and it gave Felix an edge. He wanted cuddles? Someone was always happy to be displaced in the cuddle pile. He was cold and wanted to steal someone’s jacket because he hadn’t brought one? Members were fighting and Felix was overwhelmed? Compromise suddenly seemed so easy. Someone was happy to decide it wasn’t really so cold and they didn’t need their own jacket after all. All it took was the slightest wobble of Felix’s lower lip or a silence that went on a beat too long and everyone was tripping over themselves to stop the waterworks before they could start. 

Minho, on the other hand, took a while to catch on. He noticed loud conversations silencing when he walked into rooms and heated glares turning into awkward avoidance not long after he returned, and at first he thought the tension involved him somehow. Eventually he couldn’t take it anymore. He grew short with everyone around him, unwilling to put up with even a little bit of sass and snapping back immediately any time anyone said anything to him. It all came to a head, oddly enough, in a supermarket. 

“Let’s buy five and then if that isn’t enough–”

“We’ll eliminate people,” he snarked, cutting Changbin off. It had made Hyunjin laugh all high pitched and awkward, but Changbin had just edged away from him and went quiet for the rest of the trip. Later at home, Minho found out why.

“Changbin told me what you said at the supermarket earlier,” Chan began. Minho had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. “They’re still shook up, Minho. You can’t say things like that, especially around the younger ones. You didn’t see them while you were gone.”

“Obviously I didn’t see them while I was gone,” Minho sneered, “I was _gone.”_

Chan breathed in deeply and closed his eyes for a moment, gathering strength to deal with an annoyed Minho without snapping and escalating the situation. 

“What’s got you so on edge lately?” was what he finally settled on. “Things were good for a while when you and Felix came back but now… what’s different, Min? You’re snapping at everyone, you’re not talking to anyone unless they talk to you first, and now you’re talking about eliminating people in front of Hyunjin. Just tell me what’s going on, please? We’re all so glad to have you back–”

“If everyone’s so glad to have me back then why is everyone acting weird? Every time I walk into a room the conversation stops, half the time no one will talk in front of me, or they won’t meet my eyes or–”

“Oh my god,” Chan huffed. “That’s what this is about?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Minho demanded. He could feel the tension building in him, coming close to exploding, but then he suddenly had Chan’s arms wrapped around him, crushing him awkwardly in a tight hug. 

“They’re scared to fight in front of you, Min,” Chan mumbled into his hair. “There’s rumors going around the company that eliminating you made you mean… meaner than you already were. They don’t want to fight in front of you because they don’t want to set you off and see you become the different person they keep hearing about from the trainees. They respect you more now because they know you took care of Felix and you worked so hard that JYP decided to change his mind about eliminating you and you brought Felix back with you.”

Minho stayed in Chan’s embrace until there was a little shuffle behind them and a second body plastered itself to his back. He began squirming, trying to throw the newcomer off, but then stilled when he recognized the little whine as Jisung’s. 

“Sorry Sungie,” he said quickly, removing his foot where it had come down on top of the younger boy’s.

“Why are we hugging Minho hyung?” Jisung mumbled into Minho’s neck. “Is everyone else invited?”

Before Minho could tell him no, they most certainly were not, Chan was saying, “yep, run and get them while I hold him down. Run, Sung, run!”

Five minutes later saw not only Chan holding him down, but Changbin as well while the others took the free chance to cuddle up to Minho. He could feel a face rubbing into his neck, probably Jisung. The boy hadn’t moved from that spot from the beginning, even when Changbin had joined Chan in holding Minho’s hands behind his back. Standing there in the hallway with Jisung nuzzling his neck, Hyunjin and Felix tucked up against his sides, and Chan and Changbin holding him still, Minho started to feel a little bit like normal again. For the first time in a while, there was no urge to eviscerate them all with sharp words.

That didn’t stop him from struggling and kicking shins though. 

He eventually fought his way out and bolted for his room, slamming the door behind him and leaning on it as heavily as he could to keep the others out. Eventually they gave up and he was able to regain his dignity quietly for a couple of hours before anyone came knocking. He checked to make sure it wasn’t Chan or one of their managers, cracking the door open with a resolve that if it was anyone else, he was going to tell them to buzz off. 

Unfortunately, if there was one thing Minho was weak for, it was The Expression and his resolution was useless against it. The second he locked eyes with a soft looking Jisung, he was stepping aside and holding the door open enough for the younger boy to step inside the room. 

“Hi hyung,” Jisung smiled, wandering over and planting himself on Minho’s bed. 

“Haven’t you had enough cuddles for one day?” Minho chuckled, but Jisung just sprawled out and (unfortunately for Minho’s pounding heart) made grabby hands at him. Minho settled down next to him and let him curl up on his chest, appreciating The Expression as best he could from his vantage point. The two of them settled into a nap while the rest crowded Felix as he baked in the kitchen. 

Cuddling with Jisung became a habit as their official debut approached. With Minho’s newfound argument stopping powers there was less tension than when they were preparing for the survival show. There wasn’t a cycle of good and bad times, just a kind of constant underlying thrum of anxiety and exhaustion. Rather than let it build up until screaming matches and silent treatments became inevitable, Minho actually used his hyung status to end fights before they started and left everyone a little less tense. Jisung had always been the first to go off and the first to come back down, but Minho’s involvement closed off his outlet. 

Before, Jisung would have started a fight, thrown a wallet, or just stormed out of the room when he started getting anxious, expressing it through anger. Now, he just kept getting more and more high strung, closer to tears, closer to a breaking point until Minho stopped him in the hallway one day and tugged him into his bedroom.

“Sung, are you alright?” he had asked, and it was like taking explosives to a dam. 

Jisung’s eyes welled up with tears and he was suddenly holding a whole Jisung in his arms. Minho looked around for help (literally any help) and found himself completely alone. He was the fight-ending hyung now, not the hug-while-sobbing-hysterically hyung and he was way out of his depth. 

“Come on, Sung, sit down and I’ll go find Chan–”

Minho’s voice cut off with a harsh squeak as Jisung’s skinny arms squeezed him tight enough he felt his ribs creak. Honestly, where did that strength come from? 

“Okay,” he groaned, “okay, just relax. I don’t have to get Chan if you don’t want me to.”

“Just stay,” the boy whimpered. Unsure of what exactly to do but unwilling to be compressed into a singularity, Minho guided the boy over to sit on the edge of his bed. He sat down beside him, unable to get far with Jisung’s arms tight around him.

“What happened, Sung?” he asked gently once Jisung’s sobbing had died off into little sniffles. Jisung went stiff again but the crying didn’t pick back up; instead, he buried his face in Minho’s shoulder and hid away. There was a mumbled answer that Minho had to ask him to repeat twice before Jisung finally showed his face, staring down at his lap to tell Minho what had happened. 

“Chan told me I had to stop being an asshole when I’m anxious because everyone else is making an effort to get along better,” he muttered angrily. “So I was trying to blow of steam another way and he walked in on me and now he won’t look me in the eyes and I know he’s going to tell Changbin and Changbin is going to tell Felix and then somehow Hyunjin will find out and no one is ever going to want to talk to me again–”

“First of all,” Minho interrupted calmly, “it’s Chan _hyung_ and Changbin _hyung_ to you, Han Jisung. Second of all, what did Chan catch you doing? You make it sound like you were kicking puppies or something.”

Even with Jisung mumbling his response, the immediate flush across his cheeks and the tops of his ears told Minho exactly what he needed to know.

“Everyone does it, Sung,” he said awkwardly, and in another emotional flip, Jisung scowled at him.

“I know that, _hyung,”_ he snarked. “It’s not like I’ve never been walked in on before– I share a room with _Hyunjin_. It was just weird today because I was… because I was in the bathroom at the company while Chan and Changbin were supposed to be recording a new piece. Chan came in and it was just… it was weird and he was weird about it and now I feel weird about it.”

“It’s not weird,” Minho assured him, although Minho himself was feeling very weird about the whole thing. He still wasn’t sure how to comfort(?) Jisung or if he should be trying to ask Chan about what had happened. Instead, he held Jisung awkwardly, absorbing the warmth coming off of the boy and rocking him gently when he seemed to start getting upset again. 

“Thank you hyung,” Jisung sighed finally. He picked his head up off Minho’s shoulder and gave him an awkward smile. “I know that was probably really uncomfortable for you but I needed it. I’m sorry if I freaked you out.”

“It’s alright Sungie,” he promised. “But Chan is probably going to be back for a shower and dinner before he goes back to the company soon– it’s getting kind of late. If you don’t want to see him you might want to go lock yourself in your room or something.”

Jisung hopped off the bed and thanked Minho again before taking his leave, but Minho wasn’t paying much attention. Seeing how long it took for Jisung to stop sniffling into his shirt had ignited a simmering rage in Minho that wasn’t unlike what he had felt after being eliminated. It took him by surprise, especially when it felt so much more intense to have it directed at someone close to him rather than the CEO of the entire company (and himself). He found himself remaining at the edge of his bed, waiting for Chan and Changbin to slouch through the door in search of fresh clothes so they could shower before returning to the studio. Just as he had predicted, Jisung wasn’t gone for long before the two of them showed up. 

“ _You,”_ he said sharply, pointing an angry finger at Chan. He really hoped his new intimidation power worked on people older than him, acutely aware of the year between Chan and himself. Chan glanced between Minho and Changbin, looking slightly awkward and extremely alarmed. 

“Me?”

“You,” Minho confirmed. “You upset Jisungie.”

Chan went pale at that, managing to look as if he’d been slapped with something dead and slimey. Changbin grabbed his clothes and ran out without saying a word. 

“Jisung–”

“I know what Jisung was doing,” Minho snapped, “and I know walking in on him was awkward but you didn’t have to make him feel bad about it. That was an asshole move, Chan. He came in here looking all sad and I asked him what was wrong and he burst into tears. _You made Jisung cry._ We’re days away from debut, we’re all pent up and between me breaking up fights and you telling him off, he has no way to blow off steam anymore. He thinks you’re going to tell the whole group and no one is going to want to talk to him anymore like he’s contagious or something. Jesus Christ, Chan, you didn’t have to be a dick to him about it.”

By the time Minho was done saying his piece, he was out of breath and the anger was starting to dissipate a little. Chan still stood in the doorway, though now he was looking a lot less awkward and a lot more ashamed of himself. 

“Well? Don’t you have anything to say?” Minho demanded, crossing his arms. The rage was bubbling low now, rather than rising up and choking him, but he was still annoyed that their _leader_ had been so careless with the feelings of Minho’s ~~favorite~~ precious dongsaeng. 

“I’ll talk to him,” Chan sighed. “I’ll make sure he knows I’m not going to tell anyone and try to make him feel less weird about it.”

Minho nodded sternly and stood up to leave. Working up the courage to lecture his leader had left a hunger gnawing at his stomach. Just as he was about to leave though, Chan reached out and stopped him.

“It wasn’t catching him jerking off that made it weird,” Chan said simply. “It was what was playing on his phone when he ripped his headphones out on accident. Ask him about that if you’re ever curious.”

  
The look Minho shot Chan was somewhere between disgusted and enraged. 

“It’s not my business what Jisung jerks off to. That’s supposed to be private and I _respect_ that,” he hissed, shaking Chan’s hand off his arm and slamming the bedroom door behind him. 

Those were the last words Minho spoke to Chan until they were coming off their debut stage a few days later. Hyped up on adrenaline and too exhilarated to reject any kind of affection, he allowed Chan to clap a hand on his shoulder and shake him roughly.

“We did it!” the leader shouted. The shoulder clap turned into a rough hug before he was moving onto the other members, hugging them and shouting in excitement. Some members shouted back. Some seemed shell shocked. One just looked tired and vaguely pleased. 

“Dinner on JYP,” one of the managers announced and everyone perked up even more, if that was even possible. The group was quick to change into street clothes and attack their faces with makeup wipes, getting rid of what they could and leaving looking not unlike a herd of very excited raccoons. 

Despite all the zeal for food one could expect from a group of teenagers who had just expended an ungodly amount of energy, the dinner itself was actually fairly subdued. They were all exhausted, eating and talking happily but without the normal screeching and flailing. That did change, however, with their manager’s next announcement. 

“JYP himself just texted me,” he laughed, a little too incredulous for Minho’s taste. Minho took a bite of his rice and quirked an eyebrow while the others demanded to know what the text was about. “He said he was blown away by your performance… and said to tell you that dessert is on the company as well, not just dinner.”

That invited cheers that had the rest of the restaurant staring and their manager waving frantically at the boys to calm down. Minho looked around, just taking in the happiness of his members but to his surprise, his eyes caught on one member looking less excited than the rest. Jisung was sitting directly across from him and he was smiling, but there were little lines around his eyes that spoke of exhaustion and, knowing Jisung, probably anxiety. Minho knew Jisung well, knew that the younger boy was probably itching to get home and decompress in his comfort zone. Gently, he felt along with his foot until it connected with Jisung’s and then gave it a gentle tap. 

_“Skip dessert?”_ he mouthed, “ _Go home early?”_

Jisung looked torn for a moment but then he nodded slowly. Minho tidied his place at the table and stood up, wiggling around some of the others until he was standing behind their manager’s seat. He leaned in and caught the man’s attention with a little cough. 

“Would it be okay if Jisung and I went back early? He’s getting anxious and I think he probably needs to get home and get some sleep after all the excitement today,” Minho mumbled softly in the manager’s ear. 

“That’s fine,” he said softly. “Go ahead and get him ready and wait in the lobby– I’ll have the company send a car so you don’t have to walk back by yourselves.”

Minho thanked their manager over and over before sneaking back to his seat and grabbing his jacket and gesturing for Jisung to do the same. 

“See you guys at home,” Jisung called out to the rest of them as they made their way out. Minho caught the beginning of the manager explaining as he followed Jisung toward the lobby. 

“He said he would call a car for us so we can just wait–” Minho started, but there was already a sleek black car pulling up in front of the building. They stared as a surprising figure climbed out from the driver’s seat. Minho rushed out to greet the woman, Jisung hot on his heels. 

“Hey kiddos,” she grinned. “Heard you guys needed a ride.”

“Oh no! That’s okay, Sunmi sunbaenim!” Minho fretted, eyes wide. “The company is sending one–”

“I am the ride,” she laughed. “I was leaving a meeting with PD-nim when your manager texted asking for a car and he said most of the staff had already left. I was leaving anyway so I offered to come get you. Hop in the car.”

Mortified and very much in awe, Minho and Jisung climbed into the back seat of Sunmi’s car. Jisung was apparently feeling incredibly anxious; he reached out and gripped Minho’s hand before Sunmi even pulled away from the curb. Minho squeezed the younger boy’s hand tightly, soothing him as Sunmi chatted at them to fill the quiet. 

“I saw your debut stage while I was at the company building today,” she revealed. “PD-nim was watching the screening of the rehearsal when I arrived so we put off our meeting until after your stage so we could watch. You guys killed it up there, it was great!”

“Thank you, sunbaenim–”

“Call me noona,” she corrected quickly. 

  
“Thank you, noona,” Minho adjusted. “We worked hard, we’re glad you liked the performance.”

He caught her glancing in the rearview mirror but their eyes didn’t meet. She seemed to be glancing farther down, though Minho wasn’t sure exactly what she could see with the mirror’s angle. Whatever she saw though, it made her smile softly. Jisung was sitting close to Minho, their thighs pressed together with their clasped hands resting on top of the crease where their legs met. His eyes were just barely shut, but Minho could feel him doing his breathing exercises to try and calm himself down. Struck by inspiration, Minho squeezed Jisung’s hand once, twice, three times and then two shorter squeezes. A long squeeze. A short squeeze. A medium squeeze. A long squeeze. 

Minho kept up his rhythmic squeezing until slowly, Jisung started squeezing back. The two of them got all the way through the instrumental for Hellevator as Minho split his attention between timing the squeezes and talking with Sunmi and Minho frantically began searching through his arsenal of music for another song as they neared the end of Hellevator. They were only two minutes from the dorm– he only needed one instrumental, that would last him long enough to get Jisung out of the car and away from the woman they both admired and feared. 

Out of sheer panic, Minho started squeezing along to the first song he could coherently scramble together. Six medium squeezes, two long squeezes, pause. Four medium squeezes, two long squeezes, and then squeeze and hold. Minho could time the beat of the song more accurately than he could time any of their own music, even while holding an entire conversation. He’d done it for months, chatting with other dancers and practicing at the same time. Halfway through the song, Sunmi pulled up to the curb outside of their door and shot him a smile in the rearview mirror. 

“Have a nice night, boys. I hope you feel better… Jisung, right?” she said sweetly. 

Jisung nodded awkwardly and began to scramble out of the car. Minho offered her an apologetic smile, made some excuse for Jisung’s manners, and then chased after him with the sound of her laughter hot on his heels. He didn’t catch up to Jisung until they were in the elevator, at which point Jisung twisted around and threw his arms around Minho’s waist. A little more prepared than last time but still wildly out of his depth, Minho wrapped one arm around Jisung’s shoulders and used his free hand to stroke his hair. 

“You okay?” he asked gently. Jisung nodded, though he kept his face hidden in Minho’s chest until the elevator pinged on their floor. He released Minho long enough to get into the dorm and then shifted awkwardly on his feet. 

“You can take the first shower if you want, hyung,” he offered. “I escaped before the makeup noonas started waving the body glitter around.”

“Thanks, Jisungie,” Minho smiled, not waiting around for Jisung to change his mind. He liked his dongsaeng and all, but he wasn’t about to pass up on a hot shower with virtually no chance of someone pounding on the door, screaming at him to hurry up before he even managed to get shampoo in his hair.

Minho’s shower was mediocre. It was normal, it was fine, he got in, he got clean, he got out quickly. What greeted him when he came out of the bathroom though? Completely different story. Minho rushed down the hall in his pyjama pants with no shirt, glaring at the shirt in his hand in frustration. Honestly, Jeongin was tiny. How did his clothes even end up mixing with Minho’s in the first place? He was so absorbed in his annoyance at the laundry that he nearly missed it, but the world was cruel. Instead of going about his evening blissfully unaware, Minho caught the tail end of a sound as it echoed from Jisung’s room. Concerned, Minho raised his hand to knock on the door, only to be cut off by a second, louder sound.

The second time, the sound was unmistakable. That was a moan, no question about it. Minho found himself frozen next to the door, breathing quietly and unable to convince his feet to move. Spying on Jisung was wrong, but he couldn’t seem to communicate that to the rest of his body. Instead of rushing back to his room to find a shirt that actually fit, he stood there and listened as his dongsaeng _decompressed._ He knew Jisung thought he was still in the shower– Minho, when given the chance, usually stretched his showers for as long as he thought he could get away with. Apparently, Jisung hadn’t considered that Minho might rush his shower if he thought his ~~favorite~~ precious dongsaeng was having an anxiety attack and shouldn’t be left alone. 

Jisung’s moans, to Minho’s surprise, were actually very soft. Minho had a feeling if Jisung didn’t happen to have the bed closest to the door, he wouldn’t even be able to hear him. Still, the slight crack between the door and the frame let the sound escape. Minho remembered what Chan had said a few days ago and wondered if Jisung had headphones in. Was he watching something on his phone? Listening? Reading? Or was he just using his imagination this time? Minho found his thoughts running away from him, escaping out into his conscious mind before his (apparently broken) filter could catch them. Was Jisung naked? Taking advantage of what he thought was a mostly empty dorm to enjoy himself properly, sprawled out and bare? Or had he been so worked up over something that he had thrown himself onto his bed and unzipped his jeans, shoving them down just far enough to get his hand in? 

Minho stood there like a statue, agonizing over the images of Jisung floating through his mind until he glanced down and noticed the tent in his pants. The startling sight was enough to send him running for his bedroom just as Jisung cried out. Minho hadn’t realized just how much Jisung’s sounds and his own thoughts were getting to him but as soon as he reached his own room it was like a switch was flipped. All rational thought gone, Minho shoved his hand into his pyjama pants and stroked himself hard. With the thoughts of Jisung still fresh, it didn’t take long for Minho to sag against the door as his knees went weak during his orgasm. He quickly rifled around until he found new pants and a shirt that fit, wiping his hands on his newly soiled pants and then sneaking out to the kitchen to wash his hands properly in case Jisung was already in the bathroom. To Minho’s horror, just as he turned to dry his hands, Jisung stepped into the kitchen. 

He was still dressed from dinner, making Minho think that maybe it had been rushed with his jeans still around his thighs just as he had pictured. His shirt was askew and his jeans were riding lower on his hips than before and Minho had to remind himself that the boy only looked so rumpled because he was looking for it and no one else would even notice. It was when Jisung spoke that he was finally able to wrench his eyes away from the boy’s clothes and another realization rocked through him.

“Hey hyung, I was going to look and see if there are any brownies left from last time Felix was stress baking since we missed dessert,” the boy said, but Minho was frozen again. There it was, right there in front of him for what might have been the millionth time, but the puzzle pieces were just now clicking into place. 

The flushed cheeks and ears.

The relaxed, shy smile.

The loose muscles.

_Oh god._

The Expression Minho had been using as a marker that it was safe to be happy for so long was Jisung’s post-orgasm expression. 

Minho had conditioned himself to use Jisung’s jerk off schedule to regulate his emotions.

Staring hard at the younger boy, Minho had a small mental breakdown, a realization that he was probably in love with Jisung, and a realization that he was absolutely, unequivocally fucked all in the span of about twenty seconds. The pause was long enough that Jisung cocked his head and waved at Minho, trying to snap him out of his trance, but it just startled a nervous little giggle out of him that had Jisung looking at him like he thought he might be losing his mind. Knowing he was acting weird, Minho shook his head quickly and blinked like he was just now becoming aware of Jisung.

“What?” he asked blankly and Jisung laughed. 

“I said I was coming to see if there were any brownies left. You know, since we missed dessert?” he repeated. 

“Why don’t you go hop in the shower and I’ll see if I can find where Felix stashed them to get them away from Chan,” Minho offered. Jisung flashed him a radiant smile that snatched Minho’s breath away as he turned to go. Minho held it together long enough for the younger boy to leave the room but after that all bets were off. 

Minho’s knees buckled and he slid down to the floor. He gave himself a few minutes to sit, frozen and unthinking with a nauseating mix of left over arousal, new arousal, self disgust, and shock swirling in his gut before he forced himself to stand up again. Breathing hard and sweating, Minho bent over the sink and prayed if he was going to vomit that his body got it over with before Jisung finished in the bathroom and came looking for brownies again. Rather than wait around to find out, Minho began digging through their kitchen like a madman, checking every cabinet and hidden spot until he finally found what he was looking for. 

He sat the sealed container on the counter in plain sight, sent Jisung a text letting him know there were no more brownies but he’d found leftover chocolate chip cookies and that they were on the counter, and then retreated to his bedroom. 

He wasn’t running away. 

He was strategically retreating. 

For some reason, thinking of it that way didn’t make Minho feel any less dirty about the whole thing.


	4. The Entirety of 2018: I Am NOT, I Am WHO, I Am YOU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looooong chapter... also, panic attack. Also also, please do not throw water on people having panic attacks like Changbin does here... he panicked.

It’s hard to maintain an awkward atmosphere when you’re working eighteen hours a day and squeezing food, showers, sleep, and any other optional activity into the other six hours, but Minho had always been an overachiever. He managed to avoid being alone with Jisung for months after the whole incident in the kitchen before anyone else caught on but when Felix and Seungmin started teaming up to get Chan back on something resembling an actual sleep schedule, there was no avoiding the issue anymore. Chan with no sleep was loveable and oblivious but with Chan hitting a minimum three hours a night, he swiftly became observant and a pain in Minho’s ass. 

“I like you better when you spend the night in your studio with Jisung and Changbin,” Minho announced. Chan had been trying to corner him all day and he had finally run out of places to hide. Chan stood in the doorway, blocking his exit, and the rest of the members were being suspiciously quiet, probably bribed into their rooms or at the company building to give Chan a chance to annoy him in peace. 

Chan just frowned at him, running a hand through his dark curls like it would curb the urge to smack Minho. Part of Minho hoped Chan would try– not because he disliked his leader or anything, he actually really loved Chan but he’d been on edge for months and any kind of catharsis would have been welcome at that point. Instead of taking a swing, though, Chan just flipped the lock on the door and came to sit on the bed near Minho’s feet. A terrible decision, really; Minho tended to kick when he was angry. 

“Debuting is supposed to be the hardest part of being an idol,” Chan said carefully. Minho narrowed his eyes, watching Chan choose his words slowly. “And I thought we cleared up the whole _everyone’s acting weird_ thing but now you’re the one acting weird. Everything was fine once we got you back and up to the debut but something’s different now and I have no idea how long it’s been going on. The others aren’t noticing because they’re so busy practicing and training and recording and they’re so out of it they barely notice their own shit, but you? You’re acting _weird_ and I’m worried about you. You know you need to talk to us about stuff, right?”

Minho relaxed a little as Chan spoke, like his body was realizing that he wasn’t being attacked. 

“I know, it’s just…” he trailed off, unsure of how much he really needed to tell Chan. Enough to get the older boy off his back but not enough to be damning, but how much was that? He’d already shown his cards about catching the others with their hands in their pants, he couldn’t pretend he was weirded out by that. Chan would know if he lied completely, but how much truth did he really need to slip in to throw off the leader’s bullshit detector? Time to find out. 

“Did something happen?” Chan prompted gently.

“I just… found something out and now I feel weird about it,” he admitted. “That’s all though, really. I’m just trying to figure out how to deal with it without making it weirder for myself… or anyone else.”

Chan’s eyes narrowed at that and before Minho knew it, Chan was leaning in close like he could smell the truth if he just got close enough. Confused and alarmed, Minho scrambled backwards but it turned out that Chan was just seeing if he could fluster him. If Minho thought suddenly having his leader in his face was flustering, Chan’s next words would leave him _reeling._

“Are you gay?”

Minho choked, so startled that he couldn’t do much more than stare with his eyes as round as saucers while Chan watched him back. 

“It’s okay if you are, you’re not the only one,” Chan went on. “I know it’s not really my business but I mean… some of the others have come to me freaking out because they like boys and they thought I was going to make them leave or they felt like it was wrong or something and I helped them out with it so if you, like, need that…”

“No!” Minho said sharply, finally finding his voice. “I mean yes, but no. I like boys but I’ve had a long time to come to terms with it. I’m fine with that part of it– shit.”

Realizing he’d said too much, Minho snapped his mouth shut and prayed Chan hadn’t caught on. Unfortunately, one doesn’t become an idol group leader by being entirely incapable of managing other boys. The glint in Chan’s eyes told Minho there was no hope of escape now that Chan had a way in. 

“With that part, huh?” he needled. “So it’s something to do with liking boys. Liking a specific boy, maybe? Maybe even… one of the boys in the idol group you just so happen to be a part of?”

“Don’t push it, Chan,” Minho warned lowly. “You’re my leader but my business is still my business.”

“If it involves the group, your business is my business.”

Something about that pushed Minho over the edge. 

“Get out,” he said coldly. When Chan showed no sign of moving, Minho rolled out of his bed and grabbed his bag. Sure, he’d just gotten back from the company building an hour or so ago but there was always choreography to practice and he’d been meaning to go ahead and start planning something to go with the new track Changbin had brought him the week before. He threw the lock on the door and stormed out with Chan on his heels, so he stopped in the kitchen to grab a water bottle from the refrigerator on his way out. Just as he had hoped, Felix was there. 

“Channie hyung!” the boy chirped. “Come taste the brownie batter! I added some new stuff to it and I need someone to tell me if it’s good or not!” 

Knowing Chan couldn’t say no to Felix if he tried, Minho took the opportunity to leave the dorm. He was sweating by the time he reached the company building, both from the August heat and from the rage bubbling in his stomach. He made his way to their normal dance studio and slammed the door behind him, glad to find it deserted. It gave him time and space to practice, to move his body and work off the energy he’d built up arguing with Chan. He pounded out the choreography to My Pace until the bottoms of his feet were numb and he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard any sound that wasn’t the audio. 

Minho had a tendency to zone out when he let himself dance away his feelings, and so he wasn’t really all that surprised when his mind finally registered a presence that hadn’t been there when he’d started. He whipped around with a sneer, ready to run Chan out of his studio if it was the last thing he did but to his surprise, he wasn’t met with Chan’s curly hair and pale skin. Instead, it was braces and the world’s most unimpressed quirked eyebrows. 

“Jeongin, it’s late, why aren’t you at the dorm?” he wheezed, searching for his water. Jeongin threw the bottle at him and just rolled his eyes. 

“Chan wanted to corner you so he could ask you about why you’re acting weird but he knew you would run if you got the chance so he bribed us into going to different places he thought you might go to if you left the dorm,” Jeongin explained. “Most of us are here but everyone else is too scared to come talk to you because they think you’re mad.”

“I am mad.”

“You’re _pissed,”_ Jeongin corrected, but he kept speaking before Minho could screech at him about the language. “We all know about your weird crush on Jisung, hyung. All of us but Chan so please, for the love of god, just tell him. Tell Chan so he’ll get off your ass, tell Jisung so you two can go do gross stuff together, I don’t really care. I just want to be able to walk into the dorm without immediately having to act as a buffer when you don’t want to be alone with Jisung or when everyone else is scared to be alone with you because they think you’re mad. I don’t even see what the problem is here.”

“You don’t?” Minho asked numbly. Was he really that obvious? “How do you not see the problem?”

“Felix and Hyunjin and Jisung deal with their crushes without freaking out, so why do you freak out so bad?” Jeongin prodded. 

_That_ caught Minho’s attention. 

“Explain,” he ordered simply and the Maknae smirked. 

“Felix just ignores his raging crush on Chan hyung and Chan hyung doesn’t notice because he’s dumb. Hyunjin keeps hitting on me all the time and I just screech and push him away because I’m too young to be tied down–” Jeongin shot Minho a cold look at the snort he couldn’t hold in at that, “and Jisung just contents himself with shoving himself up your–”

“Yang Jeongin,” Minho warned, “watch it.”

“I’m just saying, hyung,” the baby sighed, “there’s literally no reason for all this… this… _pining._ Just tell Jisung how you feel and he’ll tell you how he feels and you can go be gross like you used to be before you started avoiding him.”

“He’s too young for that. Hell, _you’re_ too young to be talking like that. Where did you learn this, huh?” Minho frowned. The look Jeongin leveled at Minho said _‘I think you’re stupid and I honestly wish I had something to slap you with right now’_ more clearly than words could have expressed in that moment. 

“Jisung jerks off to videos of you dancing,” Jeongin said simply, and then he was on his feet. “Everyone has walked in on him at some point except for you. Do what you want, hyung, but we all know what’s really going on here.”

With that, Jeongin walked out of the studio. He left behind the kind of quiet that cuts through you and leaves you feeling like your ears are ringing just to fill the empty space, but Minho wasn’t hearing the ringing. He was hearing the screaming in his own head, the chaos left behind by the maknae’s no-nonsense approach to Minho’s own feelings and the revelation of what exactly had alarmed Chan so much all those months ago in the bathroom in this very building. 

Jeongin’s revelation left Minho awkward and off kilter and uncomfortably aroused for about a week before Chan approached him again. This time he just shot Chan an irritated look and led the way to his bedroom before the other could actually corner him. If he was going to do this, it was going to be on his own terms. 

“Yes, I like boys and _yes_ , it’s one of the guys in the group. _Yes,_ it’s Jisung and _yes_ I know he jerks off to videos of me dancing. Does that answer all of your questions?” Minho spouted as soon as the door closed behind the leader. Chan shook off his obvious surprise but then sighed.

“Just one more question.”

“What is it?” Minho scowled. 

“What are you planning on doing about it?”

Minho’s jaw dropped. Was that even a question? Jisung was his bandmate. Jisung was his ~~favorite~~ precious dongsaeng. _Jisung was underage._ He voiced all that to Chan, only to be met with an _‘are you kidding me right now’_ look that could have rivaled Jeongin’s. 

“Jisung has literally been caught masturbating to videos of you by every single member in the group except for you,” Chan reminded him derisively. “I don’t really think there’s anything more you could corrupt him with. For fuck’s sake, he asked Felix and I if we thought he could get away with ordering a sex toy off a foreign website so he wouldn’t have to verify his age. Plus, at least if he’s having sex with you, I know he’s not sneaking out having sex with random people that he’s pretending are you. I’d rather him be with the devil I know, you know?”

Minho wanted to respond to that, he really did, but his brain had stalled at the thought of Jisung buying a sex toy (Jisung _using_ a sex toy). Did he end up buying one? What kind was he looking for? Minho had seen sex toys before, smuggled into the dorms while he was dancing backup for BTS and even one that a JYP trainee had managed to sneak in. He’d seen them in porn, but _fuck,_ now he wanted to see one in _Jisung._

“Earth to Minho,” Chan grimaced, shocking him out of his thoughts. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

“I heard Jisung was trying to buy a sex toy,” he shrugged honestly. Chan groaned, covering his face like Minho’s arousal would go away if he didn’t look at it. Minho had half a mind to run Chan out of the room and take care of his new problem, but the other boy was already taking a breath to speak again. 

“Like I said, I don’t think you can really do anymore damage and I would feel safer if he was with someone I trust,” Chan repeated. 

Minho’s eyes went wide as he finally realized what Chan was saying. Permission to sleep with their bandmate. To sleep with Jisung. His brain threatened to fog up again, but there was still the heart of the matter to address. The reason that Chan felt the need to give him _permission_ in the first place: Jisung was underage. 

“I think you’ll just have to keep an eye on him,” Minho sighed. Chan’s eyebrows immediately shot towards his hairline. “I don’t think I can sleep with someone that’s underage… it’s illegal for a reason, Channie.”

“That’s true,” Chan sighed, “I just forget sometimes. We’re so busy all the time that I don’t ever have time to really think about sex, so I forget how rigid the rules are here since I had the Australian expectations drilled into me before I ever auditioned for JYPE. Felix does too, so I guess it’s probably just an Australian thing.” Chan paused to laugh and then shook his head and added, “man… poor Felix. I’ve never seen someone so annoyed by an age of consent law.”

That was news to Minho and he was too curious not to ask. 

“He moved to Korea and suddenly he’s got another two years until he can legally have sex when in Australia, he was already over the age of consent,” Chan laughed. “Makes me glad I moved before I was old enough to actually care. Holding it over his head is still fun though, even if it pisses him off when I mess with him about it.”

“You joke around with Felix about sex?” Minho demanded. Was everyone in the dorm just sharing details about their sex lives with each other and leaving him the odd man out? Though Minho himself was a bit reserved, the thought still had him prickling with jealousy. 

“Hard not to when he asks me if we can do it about once a month.”

“ _You’re having sex with Felix?!”_ Minho shrilled, and Chan scrambled to clamp a hand over his mouth. 

“Fuck, Minho, keep it down! And _no!_ I’m not having sex with Felix,” Chan whispered heatedly. 

“But you want to!” Minho accused. There was a period of silence that stretched so long that Minho’s eyebrows shot straight up and he opened his mouth to start yelling again. 

“Felix has a crush on me,” Chan said quickly, before he could start. “And I don’t want to take advantage of that while the group is still so new and he’s still unsteady here in Korea without us. Maybe when we’re a little more seasoned and he could actually walk out on the street without one of us and not get lost I’ll say yes but I want him to have that choice first. The power balance is unfair if I agree right now. I don’t want him stuck here with me if something were to happen.”

Minho narrowed his eyes, searching Chan’s for any hint of dishonesty. When he found none, his angry posture deflated and he nodded slowly. His babies weren’t in any danger… not from Chan, at least. 

“You know,” Chan started, and the tone was enough to have Minho getting defensive again. Honestly, the back and forth was starting to give him whiplash, but the mischief in his tone was on par with Jisung’s and Minho’s frayed nerves could only take so much. “You could tell Jisung you have feelings for him too and just tell him you’re not comfortable having sex with him until he’s nineteen. He would understand.”

“I’ll think about it,” Minho said simply, and he did. 

Minho thought about it constantly. He thought about it during schedules, in the car, while getting his hair styled, while he was in the shower, while he was choreographing new dances, practicing old dances, eating, recording, laying in bed. Minho went weeks thinking of little else. Sometimes, at night in his little curtained off cave, Minho thought about Jisung’s soft little groans and wondered what he would look like in the throes of orgasm, if it was soft like it was afterwards or if his jaw went all tight and his eyebrows furrowed and then the relaxation took over later. Sometimes in the shower, he thought about the fact that Jisung had started hitting the gym with Chan and Changbin and he wondered if his soft little dongsaeng wasn’t going to be quite so soft by the time he got to him, but mostly he just thought about Jisung. Jisung’s pretty, sparkly eyes and his soft cheeks and his cute little teeth. He spent weeks daydreaming about how it would feel to hold Jisung in his arms without having to control the urge to kiss him because he could do it if he wanted to and Jisung would just kiss back. He lost himself going over every memory he had of Jisung pressed up against him because _wow_ there were a lot of those. 

He drifted back into Jisung’s orbit over those weeks, unable to keep himself away now that he knew he wasn’t going to be rejected (or arrested for violating a child). Jisung didn’t seem to harbor any hard feelings, just happy to have his hyung back. In a happy haze of back hugs, piggy back rides, and teasing almost-kisses on vlive, Minho realized that Chan was right: this was something he could have. 

Apparently though, the world disagreed. Once Minho had decided to make his move, it was like Jisung became smoke. He was always there until Minho went looking, and then he slipped away leaving Minho empty handed and frustrated. Minho was still holding him through vlives and touching him unnecessarily through dance practices and Jisung was still smiling and flirting and touching back but before Minho could catch him alone, the other was always gone. He was at the gym or the studio with 3racha or he was gaming with Felix and some of their other idol friends, screaming into his headset in a way that made Minho smile, completely and disgustingly endeared. Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t doing it with Minho though, which was a problem. 

As the weeks went by, Minho started to wonder if Jisung was avoiding him. At first it had seemed like inconvenient coincidences but when it just _kept happening_ , Minho started to get suspicious.

“Chan,” he said one day, startling the leader into nearly dropping his drink. They had been working together in near silence, practicing the My Side choreography that Chan was still struggling with. Apparently Chan had expected their short water break to be as quiet as the practice, because his eyes were wide when he turned to Minho after rescuing his water bottle. 

“Yes?” he prompted hesitantly when Minho took too long to elaborate. 

“Have you talked to Jisung lately?” Minho asked. He had been going for nonchalant, but even he couldn’t ignore the waver in his voice. 

“Yes?”

“Any interesting conversations?”

Chan just stared at Minho like he’d lost his mind. The silence stretched so long that Minho started to fidget in earnest, his ears going red as he drummed his fingers against the side of his own water bottle. To his horror, it just kept stretching until he couldn’t even hold eye contact any more. 

“Never mind,” he finally mumbled awkwardly but before he could start the music again, Chan stood up and blocked the stereo. 

“Something you want to tell me?” the leader grinned. Minho furrowed his eyebrows. Did Chan think he had made a move on Jisung? That he was trying to see if Jisung was talking about it? Suddenly feeling a little queasy, Minho shook his head. 

“Nothing like that,” he sighed. “I just… it seems kind of like Jisung has been avoiding me recently? I was just wondering if he had said anything weird to you or Changbin since you’re all together so much.”

That put a damper on Chan’s sudden joking mood. Minho was already spiraling, falling down into a hole of panic and paranoia, and Chan could see it playing out on his face– he was their leader for a reason. He rushed to assure Minho but it was too late. 

Minho crouched down on the floor as his knees went weak and Chan followed him down. He was going to be sick; he could already feel the wave of bile rising in his throat as he swallowed compulsively, trying to fight it back. He was sweat-damp from dancing but clammy with panic. He was pale, he was cold, he was shaking. He could feel the tension in his shoulders, like he’d been lifting at the gym, but as his breath started coming faster, the tension spread. It leeched all the way from his shoulders, down through his arms and chest and then down into his legs. He could feel every hair on his body standing on end, every muscle taut, every fiber of his clothes against his skin. He could hear the AC unit chilling the room. He could hear his own ragged breath. He could hear _everything._ He tried to focus on Chan’s face to fight off the panic but it seemed impossible. Chan was broad and packed with muscle with curly, fluffy hair but Minho wasn’t seeing him. He was seeing slender and soft, round cheeks and the prettiest lips he’d ever seen. The sight was almost comforting, but Jisung’s face kept shifting through emotions– anger, disgust, discomfort, anxiety, sadness, back and forth and over and over, all caused by Minho sticking his nose where it didn’t belong because he couldn’t keep his pathetic crush in check. 

So what if Jisung jerked off to videos of him dancing? Everyone knew Minho could dance like sex on legs, that didn’t mean that Jisung wanted him to actually be _involved_ in his private time. So what if Jisung was all too happy to cuddle up to Minho on camera and during movie nights? Maybe he was cold, or just wanted to play up the fanservice, or wasn’t paying attention to which member he was cozying up with? So what if–

_Cold._

Minho blinked, shook his head, blinked, brought a hand up to wipe his face. There was ice laying in the floor around him and his hair was dripping with water. He finally regained his bearings enough to look around and, to his shock, found three faces staring back at him. Chan and Changbin looked worried, like they weren’t sure if the shock of cold water had worked. Changbin was the one holding an empty styrofoam cup. A weird detached part of his brain noted the plastic lid and straw laying in the floor near Chan’s knee. 

The same detached part was the part that registered Jisung’s face next to Changbin, hovering over Chan’s head. If the others looked worried, Jisung looked absolutely terrified. His eyes were shining and he was flushed red all the way down his neck, his eyebrows drawn up in a way that made Minho want to press his thumb between them, just to smooth out the little wrinkle there. His breath was coming fast– was he okay? A little numb and not sure what was going on, Minho glanced between Jisung and the other two a couple of times before Jisung surprised him again. 

The boy was skinny, but he was still a whole human and slamming into Minho was enough to knock him onto his back. Luckily he was near the wall and it caught his shoulders, keeping him from slamming his head into the floor. The younger boy wrapped himself around Minho and hid his face in his shoulder, sniffling in a way that made Minho suspect he may be holding back tears. With his brain still mostly offline and his nerves firing too much information at once, Minho couldn’t do much more than stare at Chan and sit as still as possible to limit the sensory overload. 

“Minho?” Chan said slowly, “you okay there?”

Minho swallowed and found his mouth dry, like it was stuffed with cotton. He blinked and found his eyes in a similar state. Eventually, he was able to open his mouth and wheeze out a simple, “no.”

“What do you need?” Changbin asked, voice grating in the quiet room. It made Minho flinch away. Jisung must have felt it because very suddenly he was scrambling off of Minho and whispering harshly to the others. Minho wanted to listen in but his brain was too busy processing the sudden cold where his skin had adjusted to Jisung’s warmth– it was a disappointing readjustment. By the time he was used to the cool air of the dance studio though, Jisung was sitting down in front of him again as the door closed behind Chan and Changbin. 

“Hyung,” the boy murmured, “you’re breathing kind of fast. Do you think you can slow it down a little bit?”

Idol instinct kicked in at the suggestion and Minho automatically started doing the breathing exercises he used before vocal lessons. 

“That’s good hyung, you’re doing great. What are you feeling right now?” Jisung asked, keeping his voice low and soft. Minho tried to think of a way to describe what he was feeling, but there were only words and half-formed fragments floating slowly through his mind. After a moment, he decided to offer some of them, hoping Jisung wouldn’t judge him for his lack-luster answer. 

“Gross?” he tried, but it felt wrong. “Icky,” was closer, but “feels like too much,” was what made Jisung’s eyes widen in what Minho distantly hoped was comprehension. 

“I’m going to turn the light off,” Jisung warned him, getting to his feet slowly so as not to startle Minho. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor and counted the heartbeats he could feel pounding in his head and his chest and his fingertips, still trying to limit the overload of information. Jisung came back over and resumed his place on the floor near Minho once the light was off. Minho expected something else to happen, more questions maybe, but Jisung just sat near him quietly. Minho could hear him breathing and occasionally he would shift and his clothes would make a soft little _shhhsss_ sound, but other than that he was completely silent. He listened to Jisung’s sounds and the buzz of the air conditioner and his own sounds until he realized that the hair along his arms was laying down and he wasn’t hyper-aware of his sweatpants against his legs. Instead of overloaded, he was just feeling a little cold and absolutely, unavoidably exhausted. 

“I want to go home,” he eventually announced. Breaking the silence after so long was enough to startle Jisung, but the boy just nodded and scrambled to his feet to help Minho up as well.

“Do you want to talk about it, hyung? You don’t have to but–”

“Not right now,” Minho said immediately, unable to look his ~~favorite~~ precious dongsaeng in the eye. Jisung, god bless the boy, just nodded and gave Minho a sweet, worried smile. They walked home and the evening was warm enough that Minho couldn’t tell the difference between Jisung’s body heat and the smothering August air. It was comforting, to know Jisung was there without a constant reminder that his body was so, _so close._ The comfort fed into his exhaustion and by the time Jisung keyed in their door code, Minho wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed despite the fact that his skin was sticky with sweat and there were sure to be pimples waiting if he slept without at least washing his face. 

He was about to whine about the exhaustion to Jisung, but the second they were through the door, there was a mob of boys crowding him. Apparently Chan had alerted the others to Minho’s breakdown. Just as soon as he began to shut down into his normal “nothing is wrong, leave me alone” mode, Jisung did something none of them had _ever_ seen him do before. 

“Hey!” he shouted. “Back the fuck up!”

Jisung, _shouting?_ At one of them when he was upset, sure, but at _everyone,_ all at once? Not in a million years. Everyone scrambled backwards, alarmed by the undercurrent of _do not fuck with me_ in Jisung’s voice. 

“Go find something to do and mind your own business,” he snapped at them, pushing through and tugging Minho along behind him toward the bathroom. “Honestly,” Minho heard him grumble angrily, “they should know better… crowding someone after a panic attack. Idiots.”

“Thanks, Sungie,” Minho mumbled softly, just wanting his chirpy, sweet Jisung back. Jisung just gave him a tight smile and ushered him inside the bathroom, dropping his sleeve in favor of settling him on the closed toilet and digging through their cabinets for something. He came back with one of Hyunjin’s soft baby washcloths and Minho’s skincare products. 

“Is it okay if I wash your face for you, hyung?” he asked softly. “I don’t want to overwhelm you but feeling clean might make you feel better… it helps Felix, anyway.”

Minho nodded quietly and let his ~~favorite~~ precious dongsaeng take care of him, too tired to worry about it in the moment. Jisung went through Minho’s skincare routine and then left him alone to shower, but he was back when Minho finished, his arms full of Minho’s softest sleep shorts and a giant hoodie that looked like it probably came out of Jisung’s own pile of comfort clothes. 

“Do you want to sleep now, hyung?” Jisung prompted. “You can sleep with me if you don’t want to be alone, or I can get somebody else… or you can sleep alone! Whatever you want!” 

Minho forced his brain to keep “you can sleep with me” in context and tried not to notice the little scowly twist to Jisung’s lips when he offered to find Minho another cuddle partner for the night.

“Let’s see if the others want to watch a movie,” Minho suggested after a moment of thought. It was a good excuse to cuddle Jisung but if they could convince the others to join, there would be other eyes in the room to keep him from doing anything he might regret, not to mention the added benefit of hopefully falling asleep in the middle to avoid Chan’s inevitable questioning. 

“Sure, go pick a movie and I’ll go get everyone else. Living room?” Jisung asked, and Minho sent him off with a head pat. He cued up a movie he’d heard the maknaes talking about and settled into his favorite spot on the couch to wait for the others. To his surprise, only three of the others came trickling back into the room alongside Jisung. 

“Chan hyung is meeting with the management team,” Felix said slowly, “but we’d love to watch a movie with you, right guys?”

“Right,” Hyunjin confirmed, nodding sharply.

“Miss out on a chance to watch the absolute trainwreck that is every person in this room? I would never,” Jeongin added solemnly, only to be swatted by Jisung. “Hey!” he shouted. 

“Be nice to hyung,” Jisung ordered, but Jeongin just rolled his eyes and launched himself onto the couch. Jisung stalked over and grabbed the maknae by the ankle, dragging him roughly into the floor and snapping something about _my spot, asshole._ Minho shifted slightly and waited, knowing that if he stayed still long enough, everyone would settle in and he could start the movie without someone whining about missing the first bit because they weren’t paying attention. It took a few minutes but eventually Felix and Jeongin squished into the other side of the couch beside Jisung’s curled legs and Hyunjin took the opportunity to sit down and lay his head in Jeongin’s lap. Deeming everyone comfortable, Minho pressed play. 

Two minutes later, he pressed pause. 

“Will you stop squirming?” he sighed, leaning forward to stare at Felix, who was glaring at Jisung. 

“Jisung keeps kicking me every time the music picks up… there’s not enough room,” he whined. 

“Sit on the floor,” Jisung said simply. “Hyunjin doesn’t have a problem with it.”

“If you would sit like you normally do, I wouldn’t _need_ to,” Felix shot back, kicking at Jisung’s legs too close to his own. 

With a sigh and more patience than he normally had when he was exhausted, Minho reached out and manhandled Jisung into his normal position on the couch. Once his legs were thrown over Minho’s lap, Felix melted into the spot where they had been curled up beside him and suddenly everything was fine again. Jisung tucked himself up under Minho’s arm and curled up half in his lap and when Minho unpaused the movie, everyone stayed quiet. The situation was so familiar that Minho couldn’t find it in him to panic over how close Jisung was. It was just like before everything went to hell in Minho’s head– the maknaes started drifting off around the halfway point, Hyunjin lulled into a doze by Jeongin’s fingers stroking through his hair, Jeongin pulled under by the comforting weight of Hyunjin’s head in his lap, and Felix falling asleep simply because he was a sympathetic sleeper, made tired anytime anyone around him so much as blinked too slowly. The rhythmic sounds of sleep-heavy breaths got to Jisung as well, and Minho felt the moment he drifted off to sleep as his head suddenly got heavier and the muscles in his thighs went soft with relaxation. 

Minho himself knew his only hope of avoiding Chan’s nosiness was to be asleep when he got home, so he dropped his head on top of Jisung’s and closed his eyes, ready to give himself over to sleep as well. He wasn’t quite there when the front door opened, but it opened quietly enough and he was close enough that he was able to remain in that hazy in between headspace and take in the sounds without appearing to be awake. Changbin’s footsteps padded through the door, followed by Chan’s– the leader must have picked Changbin up from the gym on his way back from the company building. He listened to them kick their shoes off and head for the kitchen first, but they didn’t stay long before shuffling into the living room. The credits cut off as one of them shut off the TV.

“I thought panic attacks were a Jisung-and-Felix thing,” he heard Changbin whisper. 

“Minho’s under a lot of stress right now,” Chan told him quietly. “He’ll be okay again eventually, but we have to give him time and space. He and Jisung will figure it out.”

A warm feeling flooded Minho’s chest. If Chan thought they were going to be okay, then they probably were. Chan could be annoying, could be overbearing, but he was a good leader and he was pretty good at reading the situation and predicting just how much meddling was needed to make it come out well.

“You think so?”  
  
“I do,” the leader sighed. “I’m just worried if they don’t hurry up one of them is going to get frustrated with the entire thing and do something rash.”

“Jisung?”

“Yeah,” Chan confirmed, “Jisung wants things that Minho just isn’t okay with… if they don’t talk about it soon, Jisung might push Minho’s limits a little too far.”

The more Minho heard, the more the warmth faded into a cold sadness. Were things really that close to blowing up in his face? Had he spent so long having his crisis that Jisung was that close to coming onto him directly? In a way Chan thought was going to _push his limits?_ So close to sleep, Minho couldn’t quite muster the energy to get up and ask Chan exactly what he meant, but as he finally dropped into proper sleep, the cold feeling spread through his body.


	5. Miroh

Minho had nightmares after that. They didn’t happen every night, and they weren’t the kind of mind-rending nightmares that left him shaking and screaming and unable to go back to sleep. They weren’t even the kind of nightmares that woke him up abruptly in the middle of the night. Instead, they were just odd dreams, the kind that just feel unsettling until you wake up the next morning with a feeling of existential dread hanging over you that you _know_ spawned from the eerie dream that you _just can’t remember._

He made it all the way through the Miroh comeback before anyone questioned it but as always, Minho was only ever so lucky for so long. Luckily for Minho though, Chan was back on his _what are you talking about I can totally survive on three hours of sleep per week_ routine and so it wasn’t their dedicated leader taking interest in his personal problems. It was Seungmin instead, coming into Minho’s room at nearly one in the morning when they were all supposed to be getting ready to sleep. Minho couldn’t bring himself to be shocked by it– usually Seungmin was teaming up with Felix when Chan’s sleeping habits got out of control, so it made sense that he would be the one to confront Minho about this newest hell.

“Minho hyung, you need to come back with us,” Seungmin announced gently. The rest had started avoiding him as he started losing sleep– they knew he was getting snappy, but they all tended to be a little more high strung around comebacks so instead of pestering him, they had simply chosen not to poke the proverbial bear. 

“Don’t talk to me,” Minho said plainly, “until you can name all of my cats and tell the difference between them.”

“You _cannot_ seriously still be mad about that,” Seungmin scowled. “Seriously, hyung, they’re cats and they don’t even live with us. How am I supposed to remember them all– _hey!_ You’re not going to distract me with cats!”

Realizing he’d been caught, Minho rolled his head around, stretching the muscles and trying to avoid eye contact. 

“I want to start blocking out a new choreography for that piece Chan brought me for the new album,” Minho explained. 

“We’re less than a month off the last comeback!” Seungmin screeched. “We just finished learning one of the title tracks off the next album _today!_ I get that we’re putting out music ridiculously fast but you can’t just keep choreographing constantly instead of sleeping!”

“Do I need to remind you about Every Day6?”

Minho’s trump card did little in the face of an irate Kim Seungmin. The boy had already drawn himself up to his full height and planted his hands on his hips. It wasn’t a particularly threatening sight like it would have been if it were Chan or Jeongin in front of him, but it was clear he wasn’t going to be moved by any of Minho’s tricks… even calling out his favorite labelmates for overworking themselves. 

“If I can drag Chan hyung out of the studio before midnight, I can drag you out of the dance studio before sundown,” the boy said sharply. “You can either come home or you can tell me what exactly has your sleep schedule so screwed up.”

“Who put you in charge of sleep schedules?” Minho asked petulantly, but was only met with judgemental silence. Deciding there was no point in sitting around staring at each other, Minho went to the stereo and queued up the new track to start blocking out ideas. He made it to the end of his first eight-count by the time Seungmin made it to the stereo and pulled the cord from the wall.

“Tell me what’s going on or I’m going to tell Chan,” Seungmin threatened. “I’ll tell Chan and Jeongin and if you don’t want to sleep after that, I’m going to tell Hyunjin that you’re not sleeping because you’ve started wetting the bed.”

“You can’t do that. He’ll tell every idol on earth and then someone will leak it,” Minho sneered. “I’ll tell management that you started the rumor and then your angel persona will fall apart.”

“And if I don’t get it out of you, I’m going to choke you in your sleep when you finally pass out from exhaustion so either way it looks like everyone’s best option is for you to just tell me what’s going on,” Seungmin pointed out. After a moment, though, his face went soft. “Really, hyung,” he went on gently, “I just want to help you. You know I won’t tell Hyunjin anything you tell me in confidence, and I won’t tell Chan either if you don’t want me to. You _need_ to sleep though, you’re not like Chan.”

“Chan _hyung,”_ Minho corrected on a sigh. It was harder to resist Seungmin when his voice went all quiet, especially when Minho was already aching with the need to sleep. Seungmin’s voice was made for lullabies, and Minho had to fight not to give in immediately. He was softer than he pretended and Seungmin knew it. 

“Hyung, please,” he pleaded. “Just tell me. Come on, we can sit down and you can tell me what’s bothering you and then maybe once you get it out you’ll be able to sleep again? Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Apparently convinced Minho wasn’t going to lash out (at least not physically), Seungmin stepped closer until he could take Minho’s hands and guide him into the floor. They sat next to the wall, not touching, but just sitting near each other as Minho gathered his thoughts. This wasn’t like with Chan; he wasn’t calculating exactly how much truth he could throw in to make his lie believable. Instead, he was going through his scattered thoughts, drawing some in closer and pushing others away in an attempt to understand what was going on in his own head before he started spewing nonsense at his dongsaeng. For his part, Seungmin just sat quietly and waited. 

“I’m having nightmares,” Minho finally said. That was it, the plainest and simplest explanation. 

“About what?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I can’t remember them. I don’t even think they’re scary in the moment, just… unnerving. I keep waking up feeling like my entire life is somehow wrong… like everything has been moved a few inches to the left or I’ve woken up in some alternate universe where everything is both somehow the same and _not_ all at once.”

“Hyung,” Seungmin frowned, “those are called anxiety dreams.”

“Oh, there’s a name for it,” Minho grimaced. Things always felt heavier when they had a name and Minho already wished Seungmin hadn’t told him this had one. 

“When did they start? Do you remember the first one, or like, around the first one?”

Vividly. 

“No, not really.”

“Oh. Do you remember how long ago it was, generally?”

“A few months, maybe?” he offered, refusing to tell the younger boy that he could remember the exact day in both disturbing clarity and a dark haze. 

“That’s a long time, Minho hyung. Do you think maybe you should see somebody about them? Anxiety dreams are usually caused by, well, anxiety. Maybe you should see a doctor,” he suggested. The Minho of a few months ago would have bristled at the suggestion, offended at the thought that one of his bandmates thought he couldn’t handle his own issues, but they’d all been brought face to face with Jisung’s anxiety and none of them thought any less of him, right? They wouldn’t think any less of Minho for seeing a doctor, and he knew that but there was still a part of him that was reluctant to go. 

“I wouldn’t want to waste a doctor’s time with my dumb dreams,” he said easily, brushing it off with what he hoped passed for casual confidence. “Really, I’m sure they just started because of the comeback or something and they’ll die down once we get some time to relax. Now, can I choreograph that piece now or are you really not going to let me work tonight?”

He rolled his head sideways to peer at Seungmin, who was studying him with narrowed eyes. After a few moments, the younger boy sighed and stood up.

“I’m coming to check your bed at midnight. If you’re not showered and in it by then, I’m calling Chan to drag you home,” he announced, and then he leaned down and patted Minho on the head. “I really wish you would open up to us, hyung. We’re here for you… you just have to let us in.”

Seungmin made for the door after that, leaving an exhausted Minho feeling very loved and strangely close to tears. The lack of sleep must have really been taking more of a toll than he had thought. He plugged the stereo back in and tried blocking out choreo, only to find his heart just wasn’t in it like it had been when Seungmin first ordered him home. He glanced at the clock. There was still some daylight left and midnight was a long way off but something in Minho longed to be at home. Acknowledging that he wasn’t going to be productive for the rest of the evening, Minho threw his belongings into his back, pulled the aux cord from his phone, and headed home. 

His bedroom, much to his surprise, wasn’t empty when he arrived. Most of the others had been in the living room, watching Jeongin absolutely destroy Hyunjin at Mario Kart, but rather than in the shower or hiding out in his own room, the missing member was sitting quietly on Minho’s bed. He was scrolling on his phone– checking his socials or reading fan comments, probably– but he looked up as soon as the door creaked open and offered the sweetest smile when he saw Minho. Paired with his flushed cheeks and ears and the soft slouch of his body, he was a dream. Minho blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t _actually_ a dream, and began to get the same off-kilter feeling that he had started waking up with. Was this what his anxiety dreams contained? Was he having one right now? Were his anxiety dreams just soft, sexy, post orgasm Jisung, waiting comfortably in Minho’s bed for him to return from the studio?

“Hi hyung,” Jisung smiled. 

“Hi Sungie,” Minho said slowly. “What are you doing here?”

“Seungmin said he was going to talk to you about why you’re not sleeping and I wasn’t sure if it was going to go well,” he explained. “I wanted to be here if you needed to yell about people getting in your business or needed a cuddle or something.”

The explanation tugged at Minho’s heartstrings and between it and the fact that there was still a part of Minho that associated The Expression with better things to come, he felt most of his tension drain out.

“Stay here,” he ordered. “Let me shower off from dance practice and then I’m coming back for that cuddle.”

Jisung did as he was told and when Minho came back a few minutes later, hair damp and wrapped in warm clothes, he was exactly where he had left him. Minho crawled into bed beside him and was immediately rewarded with a cuddly Jisung, the younger boy plastering himself neatly to Minho’s side. 

“Hyung, can I ask you something?” the boy mumbled a few minutes later. He sounded sleepy but Minho couldn’t tell how awake he really was. Jisung had a habit of talking when he was almost gone and not remembering it the next day, but Minho couldn’t see his face to tell if he was to that point or not.  
  
“Sure, Sungie.”

“Am I your favorite dongsaeng?” he asked. The question was so sweet that Minho couldn’t help but smile. He had heard the question a million times on variety shows and every answer ever given to it was scripted. Here, in the quiet of his bedroom without any cameras or jealous bandmates, he let himself be honest.

“You’re very precious to me, Jisung,” was his answer. “Yes, you are my favorite dongsaeng, but you can’t tell any of the others. They’ll be sad if they find out.”

“That’s okay, I won’t tell,” he whispered. “You’re my favorite hyung. My favorite Minho hyung.”

“I’m glad, Sungie.”

“Do you love me, hyung?”

“Yes, Sungie. Hyung loves you very much,” Minho chuckled, fairly sure Jisung would remember very little of this conversation later, if he remembered any of it at all. That surety was ripped away immediately as Jisung sat up in bed and slid his thigh over Minho’s hips, sitting himself down on his lap with a sleepy (but not nearly sleepy enough) smirk. 

“I love you very much too, hyung,” he said lowly. Minho couldn’t do anything but stare as Jisung leaned down slowly, too alarmed to move away as Jisung came closer. He didn’t stop him when he felt his breath fan across his face, didn’t stop him when his hands came to rest beside his shoulders for balance, didn’t stop him when he pressed his lips gently against Minho’s own. 

Jisung kissed Minho carefully, closed-mouthed and sweet despite the fact that he had planted himself firmly on Minho’s dick. Choosing to ignore that and hope it was a coincidence, Minho let himself kiss back softly and brought his hands up to rest on Jisung’s narrow hips. 

“Was that okay?” Jisung whispered when the kiss ended. Minho nodded, a little overwhelmed and unsure if he wanted to take a break to calm down or kiss Jisung again right that second. As if he had read Minho’s mind, Jisung asked, “do you want me to do it again?”

“I think I’d rather do it to you, this time,” Minho said quietly, tugging Jisung down by his shoulders to kiss him a second time. It was just as gentle, just as sweet as the first time, and the butterflies finally kicked in. All his anxiety over Jisung not liking him back was sliding away like smoke as he let himself enjoy the moment. His hands mapped Jisung’s back and arms, feeling the muscle definition and grinning into their kisses. Minho was so engrossed in Jisung that he jolted upright and scrambled backwards when he felt it.

Jisung.

More specifically: Jisung’s dick.

A whole other section of Minho’s anxiety came flooding in full force as Jisung stared at him, apparently confused. Minho was panting for breath, trying not to make eye contact, and willing his own fucking dick to _calm the fuck down._ Really, it had been fine until Jisung had _rolled his fucking hips down_ and fucking hell, Minho was going to die. He was going to die and get sent to the darkest reaches of hell for fucking _defiling a minor._

“Um,” Jisung said awkwardly. “Hyung? Are you okay?”

All that came out when Minho tried to respond was a sad little whimper. 

“Should I… go get someone? Or something?” he tried, obviously starting to share in Minho’s anxiety. He had sat back on his heels around the time Minho’s moral compass had kicked in and was now picking at the sleeves of his hoodie and looking sort of like he might puke if Minho made any sudden movements. 

“No!” Minho squeaked out. The last thing he needed was someone else to witness this. 

“Uh, okay… should I leave then? I mean, I’d really rather not, but–”

“You’re way to calm right now,” Minho wheezed. 

“Pardon?”

“Why aren’t you freaking out?” Minho demanded. His hands were shaking and he felt sick and the light coming in under the door felt blinding but Jisung? Jisung was just picking at his hoodie sleeves like this was some run of the mill stressful event and not the end of Minho’s entire life.

“Well, you’re doing enough freaking out for the both of us and I think it would be better if someone kept their head,” Jisung frowned. “Even if I really want to burst into tears right now because I kissed you and you kissed me back at first and then you ran away like I set you on fire or something… you could have just said you didn’t like me like that…” 

“You couldn’t have waited a few more months?” Minho huffed, still avoiding Jisung’s eyes. 

_“What?”_

“September,” Minho groaned. “You could have waited until September.”

“Is this about my age?!” 

Oh no. Anxiety Minho could deal with but anger? Not even anger: rage. Jisung was pissed. 

“Have you been _blue balling me_ for _years_ because of my _age?!”_ Jisung snapped, ducking his head so that Minho had no choice but to catch his eyes. 

“I’m an adult and you’re a minor, Jisung–”

“You could have told me you didn’t want to have sex until I turned 19,” Jisung laughed incredulously. “Or you could have actually gone and read the consent law… you know it’s 16, right? The age of consent in Korea is 16.”

“19,” Minho argued weakly, but Jisung just twitched in a way that usually preceded something going flying across the room. 

“The age of _majority_ in South Korea is 19. The age of _consent_ is 16… how did you not know that? I know that, and I spent years living abroad,” he scowled. 

Minho sat quietly, absorbing the information and trying to calm the anxiety still racing through his body. He didn’t know what to say. He was sorry? Jisung might actually smack him for that. He kept his eyes locked on the blanket between the two of them until Jisung gave a long sigh and reached out to take his hands. Minho flinched but allowed the contact, hoping it was a sign he hadn’t pissed Jisung off beyond repair. 

  
“Hyung,” Jisung said gently, and _yes,_ there it was. There was his ~~favorite~~ precious dongsaeng, all soft and loving. “It’s okay if you don’t want to have sex with me until I’m 19, even if the age of consent is actually 16. If that’s something you’re not comfortable with, that’s okay, I just need you to tell me. We can still be together though, right? I can sleep in your bed and you can feed me and cuddle me and tell me you love me and I’ll kiss you goodnight, and then on my birthday, you can absolutely rail me. How about that?”

The laugh that startled out of Minho was a little choked and a little wet with unshed tears but it did the trick. He used his weak grip on Jisung’s hands to pull the boy into his lap and wrap him in the tightest hug he could with his muscles weak from a hard dance practice and the come down of the adrenaline rush. 

“Yeah, Sungie,” he mumbled into his precious dongsaeng’s neck. “Sounds perfect.”


	6. Yellow Wood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Closing in on Jisung's birthday now guys!

Somehow, their sixth EP’s comeback hit Minho harder than any of the others. Between Side Effects and Boxer’s taxing choreographies, growing tensions, and schedules more packed than ever before, it seemed like Minho didn’t even have time to think, let alone eat or sleep or any other things that anyone outside of the idol industry would consider important. They were all turning into miniature versions of their leader, running around at all hours of the day and night to get things done and replacing most of their sleep with caffeine pills. 

Minho didn’t want to snap at Jeongin, he really didn’t. He also didn’t want to be running on two hours of sleep for the last three days. Unfortunately, Minho can’t always get what he wants. 

“Maknae,” he said through gritted teeth, his breath coming hard and fast with more annoyance than exertion. “ _ Left, right, left _ ! Your timing can’t be off when you’re in the center!”

“Minho!”

“You were a full beat behind when everyone else was sticking the end pose on the last run through, don’t you  _ Minho _ me!” he scowled, whipping around to glare at the leader. 

Chan’s eyes went even darker at that and the twitch of his hands was enough to tell Minho he was going to get reamed if he didn’t correct himself real fast. Instead of doing that though, he held Chan’s gaze and raised an eyebrow. 

“I’ll tell you guys what,” he said magnanimously, “if we can make it through one single run through of Side Effects with no screw ups and one of Boxer with  _ minimal  _ screw ups, we can go home. I’ll let you guys out of dance practice before sundown.”

“What do you consider minimal?” Hyunjin groaned. 

“If I don’t feel the need to scream at anyone, that’s minimal. I guess you’ll all just have to do your best if you want to leave before dark,” Minho sneered. 

Felix mumbled something in English that made Chan and Seungmin snort and Jisung’s exertion flush become a little rosier around his ears with embarrassment. 

“Don’t say that,” he mumbled. 

Minho didn’t know what was said, and honestly, he didn’t really care. He clapped his hands loudly in the quiet room and reset the music, ready to snap at any moment. They all shuffled into their semicircle and waited out the silence built into the practice track to allow for resetting their positioning. 

Good wave formation. 

Good position change. 

Crisp movement. 

Shaky footwork. 

A decent run.

“Do well enough on Boxer and we’ll leave,” he promised, feeling a little more forgiving now that they were actually performing at the standard he knew they were capable of. “If not, we’re working on the footwork.”

There were a few groans of protest but no one actually had anything to say about it as they moved into position. Someone mumbled something about not wanting to get up once they were sitting, but again, Minho ignored it. They all popped up on time, and that was what mattered. 

As the music cut, all of them went deathly still, like Minho was a t-rex and they were hoping to not be eaten. It wasn’t perfect– but he was tired as well. He turned slowly, one hand rubbing at the ache between his eyes and waved them all toward their bags. 

“I’m letting you get away with it because I know we’re all exhausted,” he warned. “Next time you all need to have more energy.”

“What we all  _ need  _ is sleep,” Chan announced. “Especially you. You’re starting to crack. Come on, everyone, home. Now.”

“You too, leader-nim,” Seungmin ordered and Chan flinched, caught out. Minho packed his duffle with tight shoulders, his mind a whirlwind of exhaustion, guilt for yelling at Jeongin, and worry that he was still going to get ripped apart by Chan for being too hard on everyone. Much to his relief, it wasn’t yelling that met him when the others ran out, leaving him alone with the leader as they finished tidying up the space. 

“Apologize to Jeongin and get some sleep,” was all Chan said, but it came with a soft smile and a pat on the shoulder that kind of made Minho want to cry. He nodded, promised that he would, and the two killed the lights and left the practice room. They caught up to the others at the building’s front door and then made their way back as a group, all split up into little subgroups and bouncing between them as the conversations shifted. Things were tense, but seeing that everyone was still friends, no one was getting the silent treatment and no one was throwing wallets (yet) settled Minho’s fraying nerves. He slid his way up to the front of the group where Hyunjin was pestering Jeongin and budged his way into their space. 

“Maknae,” he said softly, “hyung is sorry for shouting at you, you’re really doing very well. I was just frustrated because I’m so tired.”

Jeongin’s eyes were unimpressed when he turned them on Minho, and his stomach turned to ice. That’s the face that  _ always _ precedes absolute incineration at the hands of their precious maknae. Hyunjin leaned in closer, his instinct for gossip too strong to even pretend like he wasn’t about to listen in on whatever harsh words Jeongin had for Minho. Still, despite knowing Jeongin’s propensity for being a complete savage, Minho wasn’t expecting the words to cut quite so deep or hit quite so close to home. 

Eerily perceptive as always, the maknae raised a single eyebrow and said, “you’re so sexually repressed I’m physically disgusted by your presence. Jerk off like the rest of us instead of screaming at us during dance practice… or better yet, just put your dick in Jisung. I’m sure that would put  _ both  _ of you in a fantastic mood. Don’t worry though, hyung. I forgive you for yelling at me. I’m sure this comeback is  _ very  _ hard on you.”

Hyunjin was cackling before Minho could even open his mouth to reply. But honestly, what was there to say? Nothing. He couldn’t pretend the maknae wasn’t right and everyone would call him out immediately on the lie if he tried. He knew everyone was going to hear about it by the time they reached home so he just drifted back to Jisung with pink cheeks and tried to ignore the way everyone was glancing back and snickering once Hyunjin stopped to talk to them. There was no point in trying to stop the boy– he couldn’t keep his mouth shut if you superglued it and Chan had already stopped Jeongin from trying it once before. Minho just wallowed in his shame as Hyunjin flitted from member to member until he finally dropped back to walk next to Jisung. 

“So, Sung, can I ask you something?” he grinned. Minho steadfastly looked in the opposite direction. 

“Yes, Hyunjinnie?” Jisung prompted casually.

“Is dance practice like porn for you… but live?” 

Minho whipped around just as Jisung’s cheeks and ears flushed a brilliant pink in the evening sunlight. 

“What the  _ fuck _ is wrong with you?” Minho hissed. “Mind your own fucking business for once in your life, Hyunjin!”

The boy just grinned and said something about the comeback being  _ very hard  _ on Minho before making a mad dash back towards the front of the group, putting Chan between himself and Minho. Jisung reached out and held onto the hem of his shirt, tugging lightly when it seemed like he might go after Hyunjin.

“Don’t bother, hyung,” he mumbled, “he’s just teasing.”

“Why does everyone feel the need to put their noses in our business?”

“Because they’re nosy,” Jisung shrugged. 

Minho kept up his grumbling until they made it back to the dorm, where they all dispersed and he no longer had anyone to listen to him. He managed to get the shower first, even if he had to share it with Chan to cut down on time, and he knew better than to complain to the leader, lest he get the “what’s a month or two really worth” question again. Minho just showered off and dressed in a moody silence that broke out into stunned arousal when they made it back to their room. Again, there was Jisung, his face all soft and glowy. 

“Did you jerk off in my bed?” Minho asked before his filter kicked in. 

“Oh god, please don’t start until I’m out of the room,” Chan whined. “I’ll be gone in like two minutes, just let me get my stuff and I’ll sleep on the couch or something.”

“Sleep with Felix,” Jisung suggested slyly. At least they weren’t the only ones getting picked on for their sex life (or lack thereof). Chan shot Jisung a warning glare as he gathered his laptop and various cords for his headphones and laptop and phone but left without dignifying the comment with any kind of verbal response. 

“Did you jerk off in my bed?” Minho repeated as soon as Chan shut the door behind him. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jisung said simply. His eyebrows rose a little bit and Minho came close to run his fingertips lightly over the younger boy’s ears and cheekbones.

“Really, Sung, did you? I know what the look on your face means,” Minho murmured. He stroked along the blush on Jisung’s skin, trying to will away the tightness in his shorts. The blush deepened with embarrassment as Jisung brought his hands up to hide behind. 

“I didn’t!” he insisted. There were a few beats of silence before he added, “not in your bed, anyway. I wouldn’t do that without asking first.”

Minho’s chest warmed. His boy was so sweet. He leaned in and pecked Jisung sweetly on the head before cringing at the smell of his hair. 

“Go shower,” he ordered. “Ugh, I would rather you jerked off in my bed than rubbed your dirty hair all over it. You smell like sweat.”

“Does that mean–”

“Don’t let me catch you,” was all Minho said. He raised an eyebrow at Jisung, daring the younger boy to question the words. It wasn’t permission, exactly, but it wasn’t a no either and it was certainly the closest Minho had come to letting Jisung’s sexuality into their relationship. Honestly the thought was doing absolutely nothing to kill Minho’s persistent boner, but if Jisung would just go get in the shower, that wouldn’t be a problem for long. Sensing the atmosphere getting heavier, Jisung rolled off the bed and made for the door.

“I’ll be back, hyung,” he announced, giving Minho a once-over before stepping into the hall. 

Minho’s hands were clean by the time Jisung came back and their nightly cuddle session went on without any changes. Still, something in Minho had loosened, leaving him feeling content. He hadn’t had sex with Jisung and the thought still made him a little ill, but something about getting off to Jisung getting off and both of them knowing about it made Minho feel like something had settled in. It was a warm sensation in his stomach, glowing a little bit like the blush on Jisung’s cheeks, and Minho fell asleep that night hoping it would never leave. 

It might have left if it had the chance, but amazingly, Jisung managed to keep it trapped in Minho’s belly. The boy made it a habit to seek Minho out whenever he was wearing The Expression, whether Minho was laying around on an off day or choreographing a new dance. He would come find Minho, cuddle up to him, make sure Minho knew what he had been doing and then leave when Minho started to tense up. Minho also had to wonder if he had An Expression as well, because Jisung always seemed to know when he had gotten to Minho. He would see Minho post-orgasm, washing his hands or grabbing a snack or some other mundane thing and smile the sweetest smile that left Minho’s entire body tingling. The warm feeling never left, and Minho was perfectly content dancing around Jisung’s sexuality for another couple of months. 


	7. 190914

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise the actual, ahem, *climax* is coming. I just wanted to split this because it felt like it was getting really long. Enjoy the build up to "dinner" and I'll work on getting "dessert" out soon.

Having so many birthdays in September and October could be chaotic, but Minho wouldn’t trade the time off it got them for the world. They still had plenty of schedules and they were preparing for the Levanter comeback but it was set for the end of the year and they actually had free time again now that the promotions were over from Yellow Wood. Minho was getting sleep again, the members weren’t at each other’s throats, and his body only ached a little bit instead of feeling like he’d been run over by a truck. 

Despite the lax schedule, Minho knew he would be busy Saturday night. Their manager had scheduled them a reservation at a restaurant for a shared birthday dinner for Felix and Jisung, but other than that they were free for the entire weekend. The others had made plans to go out for karaoke after dinner and Minho had heard something about an arcade, but before he could chime in with his agreement, Jisung was brushing them off. 

“I’ve got plans for Minho hyung,” he had said, leaving absolutely no mystery as to what his plans involved. Minho had flushed all the way down his neck at the catcalls and jeers, but what was said was said and there was no taking it back. Instead, he just ducked his head and grinned through the embarrassment when Jisung added, “you guys might want to stay gone a while.”

Though there was a hellish amount of teasing, the other boys did eventually back off and assure them that they would have time and space to celebrate Jisung’s birthday. Once all the laughter died down, Minho made his excuses and went to his room to try and scrabble together his shattered dignity, but there was no dignity to be had when Chan had his mind set on having a conversation, no matter how awkward. 

“Congratulations,” he said slyly, sliding into the room behind Minho. 

“Thanks,” he said dryly. Chan’s presence pretty much killed his low grade anticipatory arousal, so Minho sat himself on his bed and pulled out his phone, determined to be as obnoxiously dismissive as possible in the face of Chan’s teasing. Instead, Chan plucked the phone out of his hands and sat beside him with an awkward grimace. 

“So… you’re going to have sex with Jisung tomorrow.”

“That seems to be the plan, yes,” he frowned. He really didn’t want to have this conversation with Chan. From the way Chan’s frown had evolved into creased eyebrows and jittery hands, he didn’t want to either. 

“Do I need to have this talk with you? The, like… ‘wear a condom, no such thing as too much lube’ talk? Because I will if you need it but–”

“I really, really don’t,” Minho cringed. “I’m the adult here, why aren’t you nagging Jisung?”

“Because I know way more about Jisung and his sexual preferences than I ever wanted to and therefore know exactly how much he knows about sex,” Chan pointed out. “But you never talk about sex at all, so I just wanted to make sure you–”

“Oh my god, Chan. Please stop,” Minho begged. “I know enough. Plenty, even! Please, if you value my ability to look you in the eye, do  _ not  _ keep talking.”

Minho kicked out, trying to shove the leader off his bed, but the man was solid and moving him was no easy feat. He kept babbling, trying to be heard over Minho yelling at him to shut up, until Minho tackled him bodily to the bed and covered his mouth with his hand. He bent down close to Chan so his whisper would be heard, knowing there were most likely several sets of ears pressed against the door. 

“Listen to me, Chan, and listen well. I’m not a virgin, I know what I’m doing. I’m not going to hurt Jisung and he isn’t going to hurt me.  _ Shut. Up.” _

Chan’s eyes practically popped out of his head when he heard, but once he settled down a little Minho backed away and let him sit back up. The stare off between them was awkward but it was Chan that finally broke in the end. He coughed and made his excuses to leave, grabbing his belongings and starting to throw them into a bag. 

“Planning a trip?” Minho laughed. 

“Changbin and I will stay in Felix’s room for the weekend. I don’t particularly want to come in here if it’s going to smell like–”

“Okay, that’s enough.”

“Exactly.”

Minho snorted at Chan’s sudden aversion to his sex life when just moments ago he was trying to tell him about condoms and lube. 

_ Shit. _

Minho hadn’t had sex since right before he’d joined Stray Kids; he hadn’t even  _ seen  _ a condom since then. He had a mostly empty bottle of lube shoved between his mattress and his wall but with its tendency to leak there was no telling if it was going to be enough, especially if Jisung was planning on going more than once. Minho fretted for a moment before turning to Chan with wide eyes. As soon as the leader noticed Minho’s panic, he backed quickly towards the door. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I don’t have any condoms,” Minho breathed out. “Shit, shit, shit! I don’t have any condoms!” 

“Minho, breathe. First ask Jisung if he has any, right? He’s been planning this forever, there’s a good chance he’s already prepared for it,” Chan soothed. “If he doesn’t have any, have him ask his brother to get some for you guys. It’s only as big a deal as you make it, Min.”

The calm in Chan’s voice put Minho at ease, reminding him that he was only working himself up and there wasn’t really anything to panic over. It wasn’t his first time. It was presumably Jisung’s first time, but Minho knew what he was doing and from the sounds of it, Jisung had a good idea. It would be sweet and a little awkward but it would feel good and it would bring them closer. Minho held onto these thoughts as he nodded slowly to show Chan that the panic had receded for the moment. The leader ducked away, leaving the door open for Jisung to slip through looking like the cat that caught the canary. 

“Shit, shit, shit!” Jisung whined teasingly, “I don’t have any condoms!”

“Shut up!” Minho laughed, throwing a pillow at the other boy. He dodged the pillow and tossed something on the bed in front of Minho–  _ no way. _

“I’ve got like… ¾ of a bottle of lube too,” Jisung grinned. Minho picked up the box of condoms, turning it over to check the box only to find that everything on it was in English. He glanced up at Jisung with a raised eyebrow, shaking the box as if to ask  _ what the hell  _ only to have the other boy flush pink and shrug. “I didn’t really know anything about condoms and I knew I couldn’t buy them myself so I just asked my brother to get me a box and that’s what he brought me.”

“Can you read all of this?” Minho asked. 

  
“Yeah, of course,” Jisung nodded. 

“Please tell me they’re not, like… warming or glow in the dark or something.”

Jisung giggled and joined Minho on the bed, taking the box and flipping it to the back. 

“Silky smooth lubricant… low latex odor… 50% thinner… Special reservoir tip…” he read off lazily, pointing out the labels on the little diagram on the box. “Looks like they’re just normal condoms.”

“And they’re going to fit?” Minho mumbled. 

“Unless your dick has somehow doubled in–”

“I was worried about the other direction, you ass,” Minho scowled. Jisung grinned and took a swipe at Minho’s shorts, tugging the waistband out just enough to peek inside. Minho was quick to swat his hands away but it was enough to break the tension and get Minho giggling again as well. 

“I think they’ll be fine, hyung. Your dick isn’t small.”

“You’ve never seen my dick!”

“But I’ve had your morning wood pressed up against me and that’s close enough,” Jisung insisted. “I’m sure they’ll fit… but we could always try them out if you’re that worried about it?”

The hopeful tone in Jisung’s voice made Minho chuckle as he snatched the box back and tapped Jisung on the head with it. 

“Not until tomorrow.”

Minho should have specified  _ when,  _ tomorrow.

If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have woken up nose to nose with a shirtless Jisung. Granted, waking up to a shirtless Jisung wasn’t something new for Minho, but usually it was Jisung’s back pressed up against him, not Jisung sitting on his stomach, grinning at him. Startled, Minho tried to back up only to find his head pressed into the pillow with nowhere to go. 

“Good morning,” Jisung laughed, his eyes scrunching shut in a way that made Minho want to kiss the corners of them. 

“Morning,” Minho mumbled. “Are you going to get off of me so I can get up?”

“Are you going to fuck me?”

Minho choked. Once he was done coughing up both of his lungs and maybe his pancreas or something, he heaved Jisung off of him so he could sit up and stare at the other properly.

“It’s my birthday,” Jisung explained after several moments of awkward silence. “I’m 19 now, hyung.”

The longer the silence stretched on, the more uncomfortable Jisung became. First it was his face falling slightly, then the pinch to his mouth and his hands coming together in his lap. As the younger boy began picking at his nails, Minho struggled to process what was going on. Finally, his brain came back online and he reached out to stop Jisung from tearing his nails all the way back to the quick.

“Later, Sungie, okay?” Minho said gently. “I just woke up and we have all day, yeah? Later today.”

“Promise?” Jisung mumbled, still not willing to look Minho in the eye. 

“Promise,” he confirmed, “you just surprised me, that’s all. There’s no rush today.”

“Yeah I know but I’ve been waiting for  _ years _ ,” Jisung whined, but his pout was belied by the glimmer in his eyes. Minho was unable to resist the urge to lean forward and press a kiss to that pout, catching Jisung by surprise and making him gasp. He pressed Jisung into the wall, one hand on that tiny waist and the other cupping his jaw until Jisung’s happy little humming started sounding a little too much like moaning for Minho’s self control to hold out much longer. He detached himself and began gathering his clothes for the day, ready to spend it out with the others until dinner came around. 

“Breakfast?” he offered, and Jisung was out of the door before Minho had a chance to pocket his phone. 

_ Breakfast  _ turned out to actually be a game of  _ how long can Jisung back hug Minho before he gets burnt or shouted at.  _ He actually lasted long enough for Minho to drop two plates onto the table across from Chan and Changbin, who were congratulating Jisung on his success. The congratulations soon turned to whines when they realized Minho hadn’t cooked for them, but they couldn’t deny that they weren’t the birthday boy and hadn’t actually asked for food anyway. Contentedness washed over Minho as he ate, Jisung chatting happily with the other members of 3racha while the rest of their members slept in. Jisung’s hand on his thigh was grounding, his body heat comfortable, and the sound of his voice was coming close to putting Minho right back to sleep but for the random screeching when he got excited or angry at something one of the others said. It was as at peace as Minho ever felt in a dorm full of boys and he basked in the moment for as long as he could. 

The basking, however, only lasted as long as Jisung’s patience. Jisung’s hand on his knee? Fine, no problem. Half way up his thigh? That was fine too. Halfway up with squeezing fingers? Less fine.

“Sungie,” Minho said sweetly, covering the boy’s hand with his own. “Stop.”

Jisung shot him a pout and squeezed the flesh under his fingers one last time before taking his hand back with a sigh. It left Minho feeling a little cold and his dick half hard but at least Jisung hadn’t made a scene. Minho passed his hand over the spot a couple of times to rid himself of the ghost of Jisung’s touch and took a few deep breaths to cool himself off– it wouldn’t do to stand up from the table in front of 3racha with a visible tent in his pants. As close as he was sitting to Jisung, the deep breaths only served to draw in the scent of the boy’s shampoo and Minho had to resort to killing his boner with terrible thoughts.

Ten hour dance practices. The time Jeongin cried because he got popcorn kernels stuck in his braces and Minho got yelled at for laughing at him. The time his cousin locked his cat in the bathroom and told him it ran away and– gone. 

Minho took their plates (and Chan and Changbin’s cereal bowls because he was feeling generous) to the sink to wash them as Jisung disappeared with the others into the living room. He hummed to himself at the sink, swaying side to side to the rhythm of Begin while he scrubbed the dishes from breakfast. It was short work but dishes always left him feeling like his hands and arms were dirty so he dried them quickly and called to the others that since he had washed, they could dry and put away. Jisung was quick to announce that since it was his birthday he would be doing no such thing. Much to Minho’s surprise, Chan accepted the excuse and he and Changbin returned to the kitchen to finish the breakfast clean up. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” Minho told Chan, who nodded and shooed him away. He wandered toward the bathroom, peeking into bedrooms and finding all the others still sleeping. That meant he could probably get away with using most (if not all) of the hot water without getting yelled at. Cheering softly to himself, Minho grabbed his towel and a change of clothes and ducked into the bathroom before any of the others woke up and realized what he was doing. It had been a while since Minho had gotten the chance at a long, hot shower and he was practically vibrating in anticipation as he stripped out of his pyjamas and waited for the water to warm. 

Ducking under the spray, Minho soaked his hair slowly, enjoying the heat that sank into his bones and left him loose and calm. Their shower wasn’t cramped, but they doubled up on showers enough that Minho appreciated the full space when he could get it to himself. He leaned against the cool tile for a moment before reaching for his shampoo only to be startled by a rush of cold air brushing past the curtain. He rolled his eyes. They had a rule about locking doors but they had one about knocking as well– clearly someone was still half asleep. Minho tried to ignore the rustling on the other side of the curtain, scrubbing shampoo into his hair carefully and hoping whoever it was would do their business and get out quickly, only to be startled by a second rush of air as the curtain was pulled back. 

“You can’t  _ wait–” _ Minho began, but cut himself off immediately when he saw who was crashing his shower. 

“If you’re going to run all the hot water out you can at least share the space,” Jisung grinned. He slipped past the curtain and tugged it back into place to keep the heat in and the water contained as Minho tried to adjust to the very naked boyfriend in his shower. 

Though it was hard to keep his eyes off of Jisung, Minho tried… he really,  _ really  _ tried. Something about sneaking peeks in the shower felt forbidden but with so much honey toned skin right beside him, Minho was weak. His eyes wandered, starting at the safe haven of round cheeks and pouty lips before they began to follow the smooth lines of his neck towards his chest while Jisung stood still, apparently just waiting for Minho to finish taking him in with a smirk on his face. Minho could feel the flush in his cheeks and they both knew it wasn’t from the heat of the water. He wrenched his eyes away and ducked back under the spray to rinse his hair as any and all thoughts of willing away his half-erection died a horrible death. Jisung was giggling somewhere behind him and Minho had no time to process what that might mean before there were two hands in his hair alongside his own and a gangly body just a hair's breadth away from his back. 

“Let me help,” Jisung offered, though the warning came too late. 

“I’ve been washing my own hair since I was a child, Sung,” he mumbled around the water hitting his face. “Plus, it’s  _ your  _ birthday. Shouldn’t you be the one getting spoiled?”

“So you can wash mine next,” the boy said easily. 

Minho relaxed as the boy sifted fingers through his hair, making sure every last bubble was washed out. It sent a tingling down his body, from the roots of his hair all the way down to his fingers and toes and damn if Minho wasn’t going to enjoy being spoiled for a few minutes. As long as Jisung kept his hands above the waist, Minho wasn’t going to stop him. He hummed and sighed and let Jisung nudge him this way and that as the younger boy massaged conditioner into his hair and rinsed that as well.

“My turn now, hyung,” he teased once Minho’s hair was squeaky clean. 

Loose and more relaxed than he’d been in a long time, Minho tugged Jisung into the spray and wet his hair with careful fingers. The brown soaked down into an inky black and Minho paused for a moment to mourn soft little predebut Jisung’s natural hair. The bleaching had done a number on it over time and it wasn’t dead yet but Minho could feel the difference between his own hair and Jisung’s rougher strands. On impulse, he reached out and grabbed Chan’s fancy repair shampoo. It made Jisung’s nose crinkle as the strong smell spread, but Minho went on, working the gel into a lather and massaging it into Jisung’s hair until he was sure every hair was coated. Minho would have had to be blind to miss the way Jisung’s breathing grew slower and heavier as his fingers worked through his hair. Against his better judgement, he raked his fingernails down Jisung’s scalp and the heavy breathing gave way to a soft groan that shook Minho to his core. 

“Feels nice,” he mumbled, leaning back into Minho’s chest. It took every ounce of willpower in Minho’s body not to grind forward, but he managed somehow. Instead, he leaned forward and peeked over Jisung’s shoulder, glancing down and yeah, there it was. Jisung was hard, right there in Minho’s shower, completely shameless, and  _ shit _ , Minho hadn’t even done anything to stop him. With water pouring over them both and Minho suddenly very, very aware of the entire situation, he rinsed Jisung’s hair and conditioned it with a little less care before grabbing a bottle of body wash– any body wash– and rubbing it into Jisung’s chest. The younger boy was completely out of it, enjoying Minho’s touch as he rushed to finish the shower before his dick overruled his brain. 

“Turn around for me,” Minho said through gritted teeth. Jisung did as he was told without a second of hesitation, spinning in place and snuggling up to Minho still covered in suds. Minho was frozen, regretting his own words as Jisung’s skinny arms snaked around him and pulled him in close. Jisung’s chest was flush against his, his feet tucked neatly between his, his erection pressed against the jut of his hip bone. Minho’s own was tucked up against Jisung’s stomach, the slick press of skin going to his head instantly. He determinedly continued soaping Jisung up, running his hands along the younger boy’s back as he swayed them back and forth sleepily. 

“You’re going to make me wait until after dinner, aren’t you?” Jisung mumbled, startling Minho into perfect stillness. 

“I was planning on it, yes,” Minho admitted once his brain came back online. Jisung just sighed, pressed his hips forward in one lazy push, and then reached for the same body wash Minho had grabbed just moments before. There was still a charge in the air but after that, Jisung made an effort to keep the shower nonsexual. His touch was firm, his hands only lingered long enough to get a proper feel on Minho’s lean muscles, and his hips stayed still even while they remained tucked snugly against Minho’s own. It was still sexy as hell and Minho’s dick never got the memo that shower sex was off the table, but it was heavy and  _ comfortable _ in a way Minho had never expected.

“Thank you for not kicking me out,” Jisung sighed as he reached for a towel. Minho cut the water off and sent him a smile. 

“If anyone is going to crash my showers, I’d like it to be you,” he said. Jisung laughed gently when Minho reached out to pat his cheek, ducking in for a kiss when Minho stepped out from behind the curtain. 

“Thank you for not making me feel weird about it.”

Minho eyed Jisung and for the first time, noted that the boy’s fingernails were bitten back. He grabbed one hand and looked closer and then gave into the impulse to kiss Jisung. This kiss was less chaste than the peck Jisung had given him. Minho pulled Jisung in close, pressed them together again, and kissed Jisung the way he’d been wanting to for so long. Bitten nails ment that Jisung had been anxious, locked up in his head, agonizing over something and Minho knew exactly when that had happened. Jisung’s nails had been filed down neatly at breakfast and he hadn’t had his hands near his mouth in the shower. Minho could see it clearly as if it was happening right in front of him: Jisung, sitting in the living room with Chan and Changbin, hearing Minho say he was going to take a shower, and then psyching himself up to join him, anxiety filling him until he had bitten his nails all the way back to the quick. He kissed him hard, kissed him deep, willing the boy to understand that Minho would always accept him, no matter what. 

“You  _ are _ weird, Jisung,” Minho told him gently, “but you never have to feel weird with me, okay? I’m not going to judge you for anything.”

“Love you,” Jisung mumbled, and Minho squeezed him a little tighter. 

“I love you too, Sungie… now get dressed. I’m sure the others are already drawing straws for who has to clean the bathroom next because they think we’re up to something.”

After their sweet moment in the bathroom, Minho really thought he had been in the clear. 

Minho really needed to stop thinking things.

First it was on the couch. His lap was normally home to Jisung’s legs when they were in the living room, but not today apparently. Jisung had asked Minho to watch one of his nature documentaries while they waited for everyone else to get up and Minho had agreed, only to find himself with a lapful of boyfriend rather than just his legs. Jisung had settled in quickly, head tucked against Minho’s shoulder and his legs thrown out to the side like it was an everyday thing, so Minho rolled with it. He rolled with it while the penguins were on the television, and then while the elephants were on the television. It was when the lions were on the television that Jisung began to squirm and the program had just switched to some type of huge bird when Minho finally realized what Jisung was doing. 

“Stop it,” he ordered, grabbing the boy by the hip and holding him still. Jisung pouted, but Minho (and his dick) got half an hour or so of peace so he counted it as a win. 

Later, it was when Minho was making lunch. Like with breakfast, Jisung was playing his back hug game while the others cheered him on. It was Jeongin and Felix at the table this time, and they were considerably less pure in their cheering than Chan and Changbin had been. Their innuendos and double entendres started out amusing but when Minho felt Jisung’s hips hitch forward, he shuddered a little. He couldn’t openly correct the behavior with two of their bandmates already jeering at them– that was just asking to be picked on. Instead, he began moving faster, trying to shake Jisung off. The younger boy just giggled and held on tighter, like it was a game. Minho tried not to enjoy it, but cooking with Jisung hanging on his back was already a fun challenge and having an erection between them wasn’t as alarming as Minho would have thought. Still, it left him flushed and put a thrill of anticipation in his gut that just seemed to keep spiraling even as they finished cooking and sat down to eat. 

Minho got a couple hours of down time once Hyunjin woke up and came looking for Jisung. Whatever the two went off to do gave Minho the chance to retreat into his room and lay out his clothes for dinner and quickly tidy the space. Jisung slept in his bed most nights and was used to Minho’s clutter but tonight was special– Minho wanted it to be neat for Jisung. He took the chance to scroll through his socials, check V Live, and facetime his mom so he could coo at Soonie, Doongie, and Dori.

“Tell Jisungie I said happy birthday,” his mother smiled before ending the call. With warmth in his chest, Minho set off to find the boy and tell him exactly that. The warmth dissipated a little when he found Jeongin gatekeeping Hyunjin’s bedroom door, lounging in front of the barrier like a little guard dog. 

“The floor is a good place to get stepped on,” he warned, moving closer and miming dropping his foot onto the maknae’s stomach. 

“The floor is where your jaw is going to be when you see what’s behind that door,” he shot back. “Now back off– they’re getting ready for dinner. We’re leaving in an hour because Felix wants to go to some light show in Hongdae first and you’re not allowed in until Jisung is ready.”

The warmth from before flooded back in full force, though this time it settled in his gut rather than around his heart. Jisung in giant hoodies and soft shorts was devastating but Jisung putting in effort? With Hyunjin helping? Go ahead and alert the press, Minho knew he wasn’t going to survive. He headed back to his own bedroom with a ball of anxiety growing in his chest. He had picked out jeans and a sweater but if Jisung was putting in that kind of effort…

He had a pair of black jeans he’d stolen from Hyunjin when his legs had finally grown too long for them. They were becoming an uncommon feature in his own wardrobe even after he’d gone to the effort of stealing them, purely because the company had been pushing him to gain muscle. They were tight now, the rips on the thighs pulling like they were going to bust if he flexed or sat but he read their fancafe comments; he knew Stay (and hopefully Jisung) loved the way his thighs looked in them. He also had a silky black shirt Changbin had given him for his birthday… he looked good in black, right? Minho scrambled to get dressed, squeezing himself into the jeans and panicking over whether or not to tuck the shirt in. Realizing that going on alone would just end in real panic, Minho grabbed for his phone and sent out an SOS. 

“Seungminnie,” he whined when the boy showed up at the door. “Help hyung, pretty please?”

“Looks like you’ve got the pretty part down already,” he shrugged. “What do you want me to do? Just stand here and tell you you’re pretty?”

“Hyunjin is helping Jisung get ready for dinner and you  _ know _ my brain is going to melt when I see whatever he comes up with,” Minho explained. “I want to at least look like I belong in the same room as him.”

The look of disgust on Seungmin’s face came across loud and clear but he still stomped forward and began straightening Minho’s clothes roughly. Shirt, tucked in. Jeans, rolled once at the ankle. Top button, undone. Once he was done tugging everything into place, he ordered Minho to sit down on the bed and then disappeared, only to come back a minute later with a bag and a tiny straightening iron Minho thought might have belonged to Felix.

“You stay still or I poke you in the eye,” Seungmin warned grimly. It was something the makeup artists had started threatening Minho with whenever he would squirm backstage but coming from Seungmin, it left him a little worried. He sat still enough to earn Seungmin’s praise at the end, a clap on the shoulder and a  _ good job _ as he packed the makeup away in the bag. He didn’t do as well for hair– there were very few people Minho wanted near him with hot objects and no matter how sweet he appeared, Seungmin wasn’t one of them. He was no professional and more than once Minho had to warn him that he was getting too close to an ear or his scalp but it was no matter. Seungmin eventually let him check his reflection in his phone’s front camera and Minho went nearly boneless with relief. 

Just enough makeup to make his eyes look even bigger and the wave to his hair that always led to Jisung refusing to take his hands out of it until it ended up limp from sweat or washed out in the shower. Minho threw his arms around Seungmin with a grin and squeezed until the younger boy was wheezing and slapping at Minho’s shoulders.

“Thank you, Minnie Minnie, Seungminnie,” he cooed before letting go. 

“You disgust me,” he said, but he still offered Minho a sweet smile before he left. 

With twenty minutes to spare and nothing else to do, Minho chose his nicest shoes and went out into the living room to wait. Apparently everyone else had the same idea. Everyone but Jisung, Hyunjin, and Seungmin were waiting around, and every single eye in the room turned to Minho when he walked in. There were catcalls and jeers but the general consensus seemed to be positive. The only negativity he could sense was when Felix turned to Chan with an unimpressed glare and crossed arms and said something in English he couldn’t understand. With the other two English speakers MIA, the rest of them just raised an eyebrow and waited. Chan did well under pressure but Felix, unsurprisingly only lasted a few minutes under their expecting eyes and cracked with a scowl.

“He never dresses up for me,” Felix repeated in Korean. Chan just sighed and pinched at the bridge of his nose like he was fighting off a headache. Minho knew why Felix was irritated– he had been hoping Chan would cave and confess on his birthday and they could spend the weekend the same way Minho and Jisung were planning to, but it seemed that Chan wasn’t ready to give it up yet. Deciding to be helpful for once, he wandered over and sat down next to Felix, hand on his arm to impart some helpful advice. He leaned in to whisper it, not wanting to alert everyone in the room to exactly how much he knew.

“Give it time, Bokkie,” Minho murmured. “He’s not waiting for you to get older, he just wants the best for you. Wait him out, show him you’re mature and wait for him to come running to you.”

Felix quickly realized that Minho knew more about Chan’s feelings than Felix himself did and was quick to nod. Minho patted him on the arm and then leaned down to put his shoes on. He was tying the laces on the second one when the catcalling and jeering started up again. Knowing he would forget about his shoes the second he looked up, he knotted the laces before he gave into the temptation. It was a smart move– every thought in his head was evicted in favor of  _ Jisung.  _ Hyunjin was there looking absolutely smashing as well but that was Jeongin’s problem because Minho’s eyes were stuck and not going anywhere any time soon. Minho’s brain was  _ melting. _

There was no sign of Jisung’s affinity for soft hoodies here. That shirt was definitely Hyunjin’s; no one else in the band kept anything that was both that blatantly red and that shiny. It probably would have fit Hyunjin’s shoulders and broader frame in a comfortable drape but it was practically falling off of Jisung’s slight shoulders. Buttoning the top button– or three– might have helped with that but then Minho wouldn’t have been able to drool over the miles of Jisung’s skin that it exposed. There were necklaces there, two pretty silver chains that drew Minho’s eye to the long column of Jisung’s throat. Maybe the necklaces were why it took him so long to notice the rest, so shiny and distracting, but the buttons eventually led down to Jisung’s tiny little waist, nipped in so small by a belt with a silver buckle to match the chains. The belt though– that was holding up something very familiar. 

“I don’t think this is what they meant when they said you should get into my pants,” Minho said before he could stop himself. The tension in the room broke as everyone laughed, but the awkwardness relapsed just as quickly when Minho stood up and Jisung got a proper look at him. Minho was still taking in the leather pants–  _ his  _ leather pants– wrapped around Jisung’s skinny thighs. They were old pants, from before Minho had started packing on muscle, so they fit Jisung like a glove and left Minho’s jeans feeling even tighter than they already were. He didn’t notice the way Jisung’s entire face went red, didn’t notice the way Jisung was staring at him like he would very much like to eat him.

“Can we leave before they just fuck in the living room?” Jeongin cut in, breaking the intense silence that had taken over the room. Distantly, Minho was aware of Chan scolding the maknae for his language but it was being ushered out the door that finally broke the spell once and for all. In the rush to get out of the apartment to meet their manager at the front of the building, Minho found his way to Jisung and took his hand. 

“You look gorgeous, Sungie,” he smiled. 

“Looking pretty was supposed to be a present for you,” Jisung laughed nervously. “I didn’t realize you were going to one-up me.”

Realizing why Jisung was uncomfortable and quiet, Minho slipped around behind him. To anyone else it would just look like a back hug, but they wouldn’t know about the way Minho casually leaned in a little to close so that his hips pressed into Jisung’s lower back. 

“Trust me, baby, I’m not one-upping anyone,” he assured. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

It earned a shiver from Jisung and Minho watched as the tension melted off his shoulders. 

“You don’t have to exaggerate.”

“I know.”

“Oh,” Jisung said softly, like he wasn’t expecting it. 

“Get the PDA out now,” Chan called from the end of the hallway. “You know you can’t be doing that outside.”

Minho leaned in and gave Jisung a soft kiss right under his ear before pulling away and leading him towards the others.

  
“Let’s go,” he smiled sneakily, “the sooner we go, the sooner we can come back and I can get you  _ out _ of my pants.”


	8. 190914: Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the end guys! Writing (vanilla) smut is always kind of awkward for me so I hope it's okay!

That, it turned out, was slightly easier said than done. 

Felix’s light show was spectacular, but spending it beside Jisung yet unable to touch him the way Minho wanted to was wearing on his patience faster than he expected. Jisung was right there, pressed up against him in the sheltered spot near the river where the lights were flashing, but their manager and Chan were both eyeing them closely. Minho and Jisung were both well aware of the weight of their careers– neither of them were going to go feeling each other up on a public street where any passing fan could pull out a camera. Minho caught Chan’s eye and made a face at him, trying to communicate this but it didn’t do much good. They were monitored like unruly children until the light show finally ended and their manager ushered them back into the van. 

“You know we know how to behave in public, right?” he sneered once the doors closed behind them. 

Chan looked torn between getting into it with Minho and listening to Felix gush about the lights but in the end his attention drifted toward the back row and Minho couldn’t even blame him. He understood the allure of a very pretty boy with a very pretty voice. He glanced over at Jisung, smiling at the way the younger boy was beaming back at his best friend. Minho couldn’t bring himself to try to goad Chan into an argument after that; he was surrounded by his friends and his boyfriend and for once they were allowed to be themselves and have fun without having to worry about the next day’s schedules. 

“Happy birthday,” Minho said softly, leaning in close so Jisung would hear. Jisung turned that brilliant smile on him and Minho felt his breath catch in his throat. Hyunjin had really outdone himself tonight– Minho couldn’t stop looking at Jisung. His eyes were round and sparkly and his cheeks were dusted a soft pink in the dim lights of the van. 

“Thank you,” Jisung mumbled back, glancing down at his lap. The shy little hunch of his shoulders relaxed as Minho’s hand found his thigh and squeezed gently. Chan was too focused on Felix in the back to notice what was going on next to him so Minho let his hand linger, let it hold on and rub and knead the slim thigh beside him as Jisung leaned his weight onto Minho’s shoulder. 

They remained that way for the rest of the ride, sharing a quiet, charged moment while everyone else raved about the light show. Minho hadn’t taken in much of the lights– it was hard to focus on the show when the brightest thing in his life had been tucked up against him glowing brighter than any LED Minho had ever seen. They detached when they arrived at the restaurant and Minho turned to Changbin as Jisung struck up conversation with Hyunjin. 

“I heard you were the one that picked this place,” he began and the other nodded with a smile. 

“My family came here for my sister’s birthday a few months ago. I mentioned it to Felix and I guess he told Jisung because they asked the manager about it,” the boy shrugged. 

“It’s good then?”

“I liked it a lot last time,” he confirmed, “hopefully it’s as good as I remember. I don’t want them to be disappointed on their birthdays.”

“I’m sure they won’t be disappointed, Bin,” Minho said gently, patting him on the shoulder. “Honestly, they’re just happy to eat. You know how they are.”

“I’m kind of surprised Jisung ended up coming. Part of me thought he was going to skip dinner entirely,” Changbin said casually, but there was a sly gleam in his eye that told Minho all too clearly what he thought Jisung would prefer to be doing. 

“Are you guys ever going to let this go?” Minho wondered with a heavy sigh.

“Probably not,” was Changbin’s answer, but Minho was only half listening. 

The inside of the restaurant was darker than the bright exterior had led Minho to expect. He was  _ definitely  _ overdressed, with several eyes turning to the large group and locking onto him as soon as they stepped inside. Jisung was attracting attention as well, not that Minho was surprised. Every eye in the restaurant followed them as they were led through the moody lighting to a private room, all curious at the sight of a popular idol group with only two members dressed to impress. The door slid shut behind them and their manager ushered them all into seats at the table, settling them all in and ordering drinks before Minho could really process what was going on. 

Jisung’s hand found Minho’s thigh as soon as they were seated, fingers dipping in to rest against the inside while his thumb slipped through one of the rips to rub circles into the flesh underneath. In turn, Minho allowed his arm to rest lazily along the back of Jisung’s chair, bent at the elbow so his fingers could fidget with the hair at the back of the boy’s neck. They fell into conversation with the others, casually wrapped up in each other while they enjoyed the company of their friends. Chan reached out to tap Minho on the arm from Jisung’s other side and gestured to the door. Minho quickly returned his hands to his own personal space as the blurred figure of their waitress became sharper as she approached the sliding door. Jisung took his hand back as well, leaving Minho’s thigh cold as he helped to pass drinks around to their proper places. 

“I told you,” Chan laughed at Hyunjin when the boy whined about the lack of soju, “we can drink in public on Jeongin’s birthday.”

There was a chorus of discontent among the members while Chan and the manager shook their heads with fond smiles. The waitress hovered until they were done, waiting patiently until their manager went down the menu and ordered their food. She gave a cheerful wave as she disappeared, but Minho was breaking out into a sweat before the door even closed behind her. The second she turned to go, Jisung’s hand had landed on his thigh once again but this time, his thumb sank into the rip above the one from before. It put his pinky finger snugly in the crease where Minho’s thigh met his groin as his other three fingers scratched lightly upwards to catch on his inseam. Jisung continued to fidget lightly, his nails trailing up and down in the dark vee of space between his legs. 

Jisung was leaning forward with his other hand propping his chin up, listening to whatever petty disagreement was happening across the table. Hyunjin and Seungmin were too busy squabbling to notice what was going on under the table, so Minho carefully scoped out the rest of his groupmates. Chan and Felix were whispering heatedly to each other on Jisung’s other side, Jeongin talking sweetly to their manager across from them. Changbin, who had ended up at the end of the table right beside Minho, was as infatuated with Hyunjin and Seungmin’s squabble as Jisung and didn’t seem to have a clue either. Deciding that a little foreplay couldn’t really hurt, Minho returned his arm to its place and nestled his fingers in the crook of Jisung’s neck and shoulder. He used the grip it gave him to tug Jisung close enough that he could whisper in his ear. 

“Do you really want my dick that bad?” he murmured, face turned away from the table to ensure only Jisung would hear. “Want me so bad you’ve got to put your hands on me right here in public? In front of all our friends?”

The hitch in Jisung’s breath sent a thrill through Minho, but it was the tightening of the fingers on his thigh that pulled a sigh out of him. Jisung twisted so he could mumble his response into Minho’s ear and the brush of his lips against his skin almost distracted Minho from his words.

“I’ve been waiting for it for years, hyung,  _ yes.  _ I really want your dick that bad.”

Minho’s fingers instinctively clutched at Jisung’s neck at the sound of Jisung saying such dirty things to him  _ in a restaurant.  _ He hadn’t been prepared for the way blood immediately rushed into his dick and he definitely wasn’t expecting Jisung to slide that palm upwards and pass it firmly over the front of his jeans. Never one to back down from a challenge, Minho shot Jisung the feral smirk he usually saved for the stage and watched the boy’s eyes go wide. 

Dinner was tense. 

No one seemed to notice aside from Minho and Jisung, but they may have just been ignoring it for the sake of their own sanity. Changbin smirked at Minho once or twice in a way that made the older boy think he knew exactly where Jisung’s hand was and there was an amused glint in the maknae’s eye that Minho suspected had something to do with them, but no one said anything and no one seemed to bother glancing at Jisung’s left arm where it disappeared under the table. Minho had made it a game– involving himself in a conversation until Jisung twitched and then giving the skin under his thumb a slow stroke and the hand between his thighs a rough squeeze. Jisung’s own game was less structured, consisting mostly of pressing the side of his hand up into Minho’s dick each time he got bored or Minho teased along the skin of his throat. 

By the time the others were gathering their things, Minho was so hard that he had to untuck his shirt before standing up in the hopes that it would be long enough to hide the evidence of their game. Much to his amusement, Jisung had done the same. They followed Chan out to the van as the manager settled the bill (thank god for JYP feeling generous) and Minho found himself searching for excuses to convince the manager to take them back to the dorm while the rest went out. They had settled on karaoke and maybe the 24 hour arcade not far from the dorm afterwards, but Minho and Jisung didn’t have a way home if the manager didn’t want to make a trip all the way back home. 

“Manager-nim,” Jisung smiled brightly once the older man rejoined them. 

“Yes, Jisung-ssi?” he sighed wearily. Minho didn’t blame him; Jisung was a handful when he took that tone. 

“Do you think you could drop me off at home before taking the others out? I’m supposed to call my parents so they can wish me happy birthday,” he grinned. 

“You can’t call them on the way there?”   
  


“My phone is about to die.”

“You can’t borrow anyone else’s?”

“They’ll want to talk to me for a really long time and once we get to karaoke, it will be too loud,” he explained. “It really would be best to just drop me off… it’s on the way, isn’t it?”

“It is,” the man grimaced, “I just don’t like the idea of leaving you alone on your birthday.”

“Minho will stay with him,” Chan cut in, “he was complaining about having to sit through karaoke anyway. They can watch a movie or something.”

It was then that Minho realized this was  _ planned.  _ Chan was never that quick to jump in, always focused on three or four or five things at once and slow to take a hint. He didn’t need to come up with an excuse– Jisung and Chan had already figured it out. Sighing in relief, Minho dropped his hand on Jisung’s thigh and squeezed once, though the gesture was only affectionate. Their game was risky enough in the restaurant; he wasn’t about to palm Jisung’s dick out in the open without the cover of a table between them and the others. Jisung must have had the same thought, as he didn’t do much more than twine his fingers with Minho’s and rub his thumb along the side of his hand. It still left Minho feeling tingly and warm, the leftover arousal simmering in his body and getting stronger with anticipation as they closed in on the dorm. They were quick to unbuckle their seatbelts and lunge for the door as soon as the van stopped, but the others were still able to get in a few snide remarks before they were gone.

“Enjoy your movie, guys!” Felix had called out, fairly harmless.

“Pick something that will make Jisung  _ scream!”  _ Jeongin had shouted, definitely  _ not _ harmless. 

Minho slammed the door behind them and they waved politely to the manager as the man drove away. Walking into the building was a chore with the way his jeans were constricting his erection but Minho made it happen, walking quickly and herding Jisung along to the elevator before anyone could notice the state they had both found themselves in. 

“There are cameras in this elevator,” Minho murmured in Jisung’s ear as they stepped on and from the pout on Jisung’s face, Minho knew he had dodged a bullet there. They rode up to their floor in a tense silence, stealing glances at each other and practically vibrating with the need to touch. Still, Minho kept his head level and stopped Jisung from jumping him the moment they closed the door behind them. 

“But  _ why?”  _ Jisung whined, obviously growing frustrated with the way Minho was putting off his long-awaited deflowering. 

“Because your face is prettiest when it’s bare, Sungie,” he smiled gently, leaning in for a soft kiss. “Go take a shower, get cleaned up, wash your face. I’ll do the same and then…  _ then  _ I will give you whatever you want.”

Still pouting but consoled by the compliment, Jisung took off for their normal bathroom while Minho kicked off his shoes and headed for the one Felix, Seungmin, Jeongin, and Changbin usually shared. He was quick to scrub himself down, leaving his hair as dry as possible in the hopes that it would stay somewhat attractive rather than drying at odd angles after wiggling all over the bed all night. His erection never flagged, certainly not when he gave it several careful strokes with a soapy hand. His intention had only been to wash up in case Jisung decided he wanted to learn how to put that gorgeous mouth to use, but imagining that meant he spent a few extra minutes just slowly stroking himself to the thought. When he finally snapped himself out of it, he cut the water off, dried himself, and headed for his bedroom. 

To Minho’s disappointment, Jisung wasn’t there yet. He wandered over to the bed and sat, wondering if he should go check on the boy. Instead, he decided to wait, give him a few more minutes, and dug into his bedside drawer instead. They had stashed the condoms and Jisung’s bottle of lube there, and Minho took both out to set them near the bed. He even ripped a couple of condoms off the strip for convenience ( _ totally _ not because he was getting nervous and needed something to do with his hands). He laid back, rolled onto his side, stared at the door, fidgeted with his phone, rolled back onto his back, panicked for a few minutes, and then just as he was about to go looking, the door cracked open. 

“Sorry,” Jisung said sheepishly, “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting… I just wanted to be clean for you.”

“ _ Fuck,”  _ Minho breathed. It was like his bones had melted, the way his whole body went slack with relief. He beckoned Jisung into the room, pulling him close to stand next to the bed in between Minho’s knees. “I was starting to think you got cold feet,” he admitted, nuzzling into the soft skin of the boy’s stomach. Jisung hadn’t redressed, choosing to make the trip from the bathroom to Minho’s room in his towel and Minho hadn’t ever been more glad for anything in his life. He tugged the towel away and pressed a firm kiss into Jisung’s stomach. 

“Cold feet,” he giggled, “that’s funny, hyung. I get  _ anxious  _ but I’m not about to change my mind. Are you going to fuck me now?”

The bluntness of the question startled a laugh out of Minho and he muffled it into the soft patch where his mouth had begun working a tiny little mark into Jisung’s skin. 

“Come here,” he chuckled, pulling Jisung onto the bed and rolling on top of him. “We have to talk about some stuff first but yeah, I’ll fuck you if that’s what you want.”

“Talk?”

“Talk,” he confirmed. “I need to know some stuff beforehand.”

“Such as?”

“Is this your first time?” he asked and Jisung shrugged.

  
“Kind of? I gave Felix like half a handjob once before both of us realized it was really weird because we were bros and I got a blowjob from another trainee once… Does that count?” he frowned. Minho gave him a sweet smile and shook his head. 

“No, that doesn’t count. Since it’s your first time, do you want to top?”

“I want your dick in me,” was Jisung’s immediate answer, no pause, no hesitation. 

“Have you ever had anything inside you before?”

“My fingers.”

“You tell me if you want to stop at  _ any _ point,” Minho warned. He rocked his hips forward, pressing his dick into Jisung’s and shuddering at the sensation. “I promise, if you want to stop, everything stops. If you want to slow down, everything slows down. If you want something to change–”

“Everything changes,” Jisung finished. “Yes, hyung, I understand. I’ll tell you if I need anything, but can you please touch me? That’s what I need right now and you’re doing an awful lot of talking and not much touching.”

Touching Jisung properly for the first time gave Minho butterflies. He’d done this before, both topped and bottomed, but with Jisung something felt different. His sounds were sweet and his body was perfect and Minho was just so fucking in love with him that it ached. He wrapped his hand around Jisung and stroked down, looking down to admire the way they looked together. Jisung was darker and thicker than Minho, and the head was flushed such a pretty pink that Minho thought he might cry if he didn’t get to put his mouth on it. 

“I’m going to blow you,” he announced, though he didn’t have the patience to wait for Jisung to respond. He dipped his head down, wriggling down the bed so he could lay between the boy’s legs, and took Jisung’s dick into his mouth for the first time. Fresh from the shower, Jisung tasted mostly of soap but the familiar taste of skin and the bitter bite of precum were both there as well. Minho had to stop himself from rutting down into his sheets at the way Jisung cried out, but he was lost once Jisung’s hands found his hair. They twisted and tugged gently and never once made a move to push him down. Even without the encouragement, Minho took Jisung as deep into his mouth as he could, and even though he couldn’t take the whole thing Jisung sang his praises like Minho was the end of all things. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” the boy whined, twisting and wriggling and trying to buck his hips up against the arm Minho was using to hold them down. “Fuck, your mouth–”

Minho pulled back after one more slow, tight slide and sat up between Jisung’s thighs. The boy was flushed– not a soft pink but a deep red that went all the way down his chest– and without Minho’s hair to hold onto, his hands had splayed out to his sides to leave him looking thoroughly debauched. 

“You stopped?” Jisung scowled, apparently realizing that Minho wasn’t just taking a breather. 

“I thought you wanted my dick in you?” the older boy joked, getting a light kick in the thigh for his humor. Still, Jisung settled in once again and nodded. “Do you think you’re ready?”

“ _ Now?”  _ Jisung squeaked, and Minho blinked in surprise. They stared at each other, Jisung in alarm and Minho in confusion, until Jisung gestured towards the lube and then Minho’s fingers “Shouldn’t you try sticking those in first?” he shrilled. “To stretch me? Because I don’t think your dick is going to fit as is.”

“Oh my god, I thought you were losing it,” Minho breathed out. When he finally calmed down from the quick prickles of anxiety that had him half convinced Jisung didn’t want him after all, he explained, “I meant to ask if you were ready to start with fingers… I should have specified.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jisung nodded quickly. “Yes, very yes, I’m very ready for that. Please, hyung?”

Minho was quick to grab the lube and slick two fingers, though he took his time bringing them up between Jisung’s thighs. Jisung was nervous, Minho could read it in the crease between his eyebrows, but he just leaned in to kiss Jisung sweetly on the mouth. Warm, soft lips and a slip of tongue here and there did wonders to relax the boy and Minho was able to press  _ in _ with a single finger before Jisung had the chance to tense up again. Jisung had told Minho he’d fingered himself before so Minho gently rocked his index finger in and out, in and out until Jisung was whining for a second one. Instead of giving it to him, Minho sat perfectly still but for his finger and took in the view. 

Jisung, with just one of Minho’s fingers inside of his body. Jisung, whining for more. Jisung with his pretty red cheeks and chest and ears. Jisung, rocking his hips down and back and anywhere he thought would earn him a second finger. Minho brought his free hand up to his own dick as he gave Jisung the second finger, squeezing the head gently in his fist as Jisung keened sweetly. He took the second one slower than the first, giving the boy more time to adjust before he began twisting them upwards. 

“Deeper, but just a little bit,” Jisung directed and sure enough, there it was. Minho pressed into the spongy spot and Jisung  _ wailed.  _ After that first cry though, he went back to those soft whimpers and whines Minho still remembered from the night of their debut, more than a year before. He rubbed against Jisung’s prostate, pulling out those sounds and warming Jisung up so that when he drizzled lube along his third finger and pressed it in along with the other two, Jisung barely even winced at the tight squeeze.

“You’re fucking  _ art,  _ baby,” Minho told Jisung, “absolutely beautiful.”

“Does that mean you’re going to fuck me now?” Jisung giggled, and Minho’s heart bloomed. The sweet sound sent shivers down his spine and in that moment he knew he would give Jisung anything he asked for, anything at all. 

He leaned over to the bedside table to find one of the condoms he’d torn off earlier, only to find that they were just out of reach. That meant scrambling off of Jisung and then having to navigate back into the vee of his legs, tripping over them and getting tangled together until Jisung scrunched his knees up to his chest and then let them fall back down neatly on either side of Minho’s waist. It put a goofy smile on Jisung’s face and his ass in Minho’s lap, propped up on his thighs, and the sight of his boy looking so open for him was intoxicating. He pulled a pillow down from beside Jisung’s head and wedged it under him in case his thighs ended up slipping out from under him, ready to get inside but more concerned for Jisung’s comfort. 

“Comfortable?” he checked, earning a glowing grin from Jisung and a happy little nod.

“I’m ready, hyung,” he said, but Minho was already pressing inside. 

Minho tried to keep his eyes open and locked on Jisung’s face for any sign that he needed to stop but Minho was only human. He hadn’t had sex in years, but more than that, he had never experienced anything like Jisung before. He was hot and tight and wet with the (mildly ridiculous) amount of lube Minho had spilled between his legs and Minho was shuddering with the effort it took to press in slowly rather than all at once. The squelch of lube and skin when Minho bottomed out had Jisung hiding behind his hands in embarrassment, but the older boy reached for his hands and pulled them away. 

“Don’t hide,” he mumbled, leaning down to press an awkward kiss to Jisung’s lips. 

“Why didn’t you warn me that it sounds  _ horrible?”  _ he whined, earning an endeared laugh.

“I thought you watched porn, Jisungie? Shouldn’t you know what it sounds like?” he teased.

To his surprise, the boy turned his head to the side and bit his lip in what looked like even more embarrassment. With a hand on Jisung’s face, Minho turned him back to face him. He asked what was wrong, if he needed to stop and got a frantic shake of Jisung’s head in return.

“It’s just embarrassing because… I don’t really watch  _ porn,”  _ Jisung admitted. “I mean, I’ve seen it before but it’s not what I use to get myself off.”

_ “Jisung jerks off to videos of you dancing.” _

Jeongin’s words rang in Minho’s head, feeling more astute now than they had before. 

“Do you watch my fancams?” Minho teased lightly, “is that what Jisungie uses to get off? Fancams of his favorite hyung? That’s really cute, Sungie.”

Before Jisung could try to hide away for a third time, Minho rolled his hips forward smoothly, rocking into Jisung with the fluidity that could only come with dancing. It didn’t take long after that for Jisung to become a soft, shuddery mess of quiet whines and grabby hands. Minho twined their fingers together, holding tight and letting Jisung squeeze as his free hand dropped between them to stroke himself.

“Close, Minho,  _ close,”  _ he sighed, knuckles brushing Minho’s stomach on every pull. Rather than correcting Jisung’s honorific, Minho drove his hips forward hard, catching Jisung’s prostate on as many forward strokes as he could. It left Jisung whimpering, his feet catching in the sheets as he tried to work his hips backwards as well. 

“ _ Fuck,”  _ Minho hissed, feeling Jisung’s body go even tighter than before. Jisung spilled between them and whined a little higher, a little less pleasured so Minho pulled out and stripped off the condom. He dropped it next to the bed without a second thought– every cell in his brain was devoted to scrambling up to straddle Jisung’s thighs and stroking himself  _ hard.  _

“Shit,” Jisung panted, his flush fading down into a soft, familiar pink. When the furrow between his eyebrows smoothed out and his pretty lips went slack, Minho lost it. He could feel the pulsing in the tight tunnel of his fist as he came across Jisung’s stomach, dirtying his boy further but with his eyes locked on The Expression. 

The flushed cheeks and ears.

The relaxed, shy smile.

The loose muscles.

Turns out, seeing it form was even better than the peace that came after.

  
Minho was  _ in love.  _


End file.
